As if my nutty life wasn't crazy enough we are adding some new additions to the family soon. With 5 boisterous children, 2 energetic dogs, 2 curious bunnies, a noisy African Grey Parrot and a couple of startlingly large feeder goldfish you would think our urban family was complete. You would be wrong.
We got Chickens!
This is another step in my family having a more sustainable kitchen. After many months of research it was an easy decision to make. The bunnies have been a huge help in cutting down our waste by eating kitchen vegetable scraps. This will be a huge improvement as the chickens can break down the bunny waste faster than nature can as well as kitchen scraps.
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| 3 different green eggs from our hens |
We started with a small backyard flock containing only 4 lovely ladies. Sorry, no roosters allowed in city limits. I had hoped to go down to our local feed store and pick out some local chickens, but did not like the look of the chickens. (balding from plucking and or fights) Instead we ordered our started pullets from a very old and reputable Hatchery. The
Murray McMurray Hatchery with almost 100 years in business was an easy choice to make with it's years of glowing reviews.
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| 6 of our eggs from our Easter Egger Chickens |
We ended up picking 18-22 week old pullets to start with, as the frail chicks frighten me. (not going to have the kid's first experience raising chickens end in an early death.) We also have 5 kids very anxious to find their first eggs. The breed we ended up choosing was the Easter Egger. It is not a recognized show breed, but perfect for our family's needs as an egg production bird not meat. This breed of bird has a huge variation in feather color/pattern as well as egg color, so it's like the surprise chicken. Who knows what color the chicken will be? What color egg will they lay? Easter Eggers can lay varying tints of blue, green and even pink eggs.
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| They were wary of us at first. |
Sadly since we live in Las Vegas we are forced to keep them in a coop/run at all times, but my husband has plans for a small track-like enclosed run to go around the outer edge of our yard. It will give them more area to explore while staying protected from our surprisingly many predators in the city. To think I was excited to see that Hawk chasing the pigeons through the skies of our neighborhood last year. There are many other improvements we would like to make to the coop/run in the future, but it works for our current smaller flock of hens.
We sprouted seeds in mason jars for a tasty treat for the chickens. We purchased the Wheat berries from
Bountiful Basket food co-op to sprout for the chickens as well as try to make some baked goods.
One day I hope to have 2 chickens for every family member in the house. Just like this old poster suggests. We will have to move before then, beause our backyard cannot support a little over a dozen chickens. The girls we do have are a nice start.
