We Finally Finished Chicken village!
Wow have we ever taken on a more complex build around our farm?! John has built on the farm LOTS of projects. He has built two alpaca barns for us. He built us our BEAUTIFUL recycled window green house. He has built a total of 3 chicken coops for us and no less than 9 chicken coops for other people. He built that amazing chicken sky bridge for our chickens! We have fenced, raised bed-ed as much of our space as we could, and he built it all! But this build was 6 chicken coops and 6 chicken runs all at once. It was a complicated build and he got it done!
We have been planning on breeding and selling hatching eggs for about a year and this is a completely necessary step in that process. We LOVE our misfit flock of egg layers and mixed breed work horses. Norman our frizzled rooster is our forever favorite. But when most people get into chickens they fall in love with certain breeds. If you are fantasizing about your first flock of laying hens free ranging around your back yard, I would feel safe wagering that you are picturing something like what you’ve seen online or in chicken catalogs or anywhere really where you are looking at pure breed chickens. Barred rocks, leghorns, Rhode Island reds, or any of literally hundreds of breeds available. That way you know just what to expect with your birds. You will know for sure how hardy they will be, how friendly they are typically, what size and color egg they will lay etc!
So! With all this in mind we took under a project of building breeding pens. We have 6 coops and 6 runs where we can keep 6 different breeds of chickens separate from each other. We plan to keep 8-10 hens of each variety. Of course any of these chickens will lay delicious eggs for eating, but our goal is to use their eggs to sell people (friends, family, neighbors, subscribers, readers etc) pure breed hatching eggs. We think that hatching eggs can be a super fun project to take on. The start up cost of getting a decent incubator can be a little bit intimidating, but once you buy yourself a good incubator its something that you will have and you can become more self sufficient for as long as you are keeping chickens (and roosters!) you can hatch your own eggs out and keep your flock going with out ever buying another chick from a hatchery. There is a wide world of hatching eggs out there online and they are most often less expensive than buying chicks of the same breed.
If you want to take a look at the chicken village all put together with out the runs attached, check out this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6J9MHL7zow&
The runs are up and we are excited for you to get to see those as well! We have A LOT going on around the farm and are thankful to anyone who is along for the journey with us!
Catherine and Farmer John
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6J9MHL7zow&