The story continues. . .

Snooki, Jwoww, and Fluffy grew like crazy and soon, I realized they were going to need a larger space, then the kennel I had moved them into in the garage.  So, I went into my backyard and looked around.... ah ha! The pool house/shed would be perfect...after a little work....



I painted and hammered, and had the hubby cut some holes for me for ventilation  and after many hours of work...I had a chicken house, and chicken run!

We moved the hens into their new home, and we added an new bird to the flock.  We got our first barred rock, and moved them all in together.  Everything was GREAT!  My chicken-raising-expert skills were paying off! In just a few short months we'd have more eggs then we know what to do with.  UNTIL....

Notice the dog

Boston, the big, stupid, bloodhound killed Snooky!  The big, stupid, dog became chicken OBSESSED! He outsmarted me, the chicken EXPERT, at every turn!  

He looks so innocent!!!

No matter what I did, I couldn't keep that darn dog away from the chickens!  He killed all. of. them!  I bought more...he killed those, too.  I was beginning to think maybe I'd wasted enough money on chickens.  We'd only gotten about a dozen eggs by that time, and that dozen had cost us over $100!  Not exactly a savings.

But, the nice guy at Murdochs's told us we could try putting up some cattle fencing around the run.  It seemed to do the trick.  So far, (knocks on wood), he hasn't been able to get the ones we have now.  

Currently, we have a flock of 5 hens (1 Bantam black Cochin, 2 Speckled Sexlinks, 1 Brahma, and 1 Easter Egger) and 1 rooster (Bantam Cochin).  We are getting about 2-3 eggs a day, but not all of our chickens have matured, yet.

On to the next adventure:

One of our chickens has gone broody, which means she sits on the nest and won't move, because she's waiting for her eggs to hatch.  Well, since we've only had a rooster for about 3 days, her eggs will never hatch, since they're not fertilized.  Hmmmm...what to do?  I just bought some fertile eggs from an online seller, and I'm going to stick them under her broody butt!  We're hoping to get a chick or two out of the nest :-).  Our daughter is very excited by this possibility.

This sparked a new passion: I want to start a small-scale backyard hatchery.  What I've discovered since embarking on the backyard farming adventure, is that I have to drive FOR. EV. ER. to get chicks, and chickens, and forget trying to buy fertilized eggs locally. . . I have to order them online.

So I spent the better part of the last few days building an incubator.  I'm super excited to see it in action!  Here's some pictures:

Outside

Inside

I'll keep you posted....

Also, we're planning a pretty large-scale backyard garden that we're going to be starting on soon.