Chickens, Chicks, and Piglets

Our chickens continue to provide us with hours of free entertainment. The last few weeks our baby chicks have grown curious about the outside world and we've taken them on some adventures around the backyard. The compost pile and the worms within were a big hit.

Our mature hens were laying like crazy the last few weeks of April, but production has gone down a wee bit going into May. The reduction is primarily due to several of our hens going broody. Or sitting on the nest for weeks wanting to hatch eggs (even if they are fake or infertile) and to top it off they have extra attitude. But when the hormones kick in, they stop laying eggs in order to sit on the nest 24/7. While we are still getting plenty of beautiful eggs to keep our larder full, we have less to sell to friends and neighbors.

Now that there's more produce coming into season, we also have more food scraps going out to the compost pile. Our hens love to scavenge and rummage through each bucket we take outside. We learned a few months ago that chickens can have about 20% of their diet supplied through just food scraps. So we are going to try to acquire about 7 pounds of food waste from a local food bank to supplement their grain-based feed to keep the overall feed cost down.

Speaking of food scraps, my sister-in-law is raising a few pigs for the family this year and the piglets LOVED the first Prius-full of produce Nathan dropped off last week to help supplement their feed costs. They can certainly pack away some food!!