Our Chickens are Home
Apr. 12th, 2010 11:22 amThere is a reason I took on the moniker crazychicknlady - I am very attached to my chickens, their welfare and happiness are very important to me. I'm a bad farmer, I'm too attached to my birds. They all have names and when they die I bury them, and even morn them (our latest loss was S's Wing Flap - she died a few weeks ago and we buried her in M's old tomato patch at the old house. Admittedly, I was prepared to just throw her away as I've been so frazzled with moving, but S wanted something more dignified for her.)
When we were house hunting I kept trying to imagine where the chickens could go. I felt a little silly for worrying about it, but I really didn't want to worsen their lot in life, and they were happy in the set up we had for them at the old house (12 by 24 yard with weeds, shade and a nice house).
When we got this place, M suggested putting them in with the horses.
Brilliant! (I never would have thought of that on my own)
As it turns out, I discovered after doing a little online research, that chickens and horses get along fine. The horses don't mind the birds (and can even see them as companions, which can alleviate the problem of only having one member of a herd animal by itself), and the chickens love the horse poop.
Our horse/chicken yard fence was finished last week, and M started building a chicken house on Friday. It's not quite finished, but we decided to bring down the chickens last night anyway. Now the chickens have an over 50 by 80 yard, including an orange tree and soon a very nicely built chicken coop.

can you find all six chickens?
We didn't make it back last night till after dark, so some of the chickens didn't make it out of the cage we transported them in when they settled down for the night. The chickens went to sleep in pairs.
Things looked very good by morning light.

Through the fence.

The yard with the orange tree.

Future chicken coop.

Shady Spot.
I've checked on the chickens three times since I woke up - they seem to be settling in fine, I'm just a worry wort ;-).
When we were house hunting I kept trying to imagine where the chickens could go. I felt a little silly for worrying about it, but I really didn't want to worsen their lot in life, and they were happy in the set up we had for them at the old house (12 by 24 yard with weeds, shade and a nice house).
When we got this place, M suggested putting them in with the horses.
Brilliant! (I never would have thought of that on my own)
As it turns out, I discovered after doing a little online research, that chickens and horses get along fine. The horses don't mind the birds (and can even see them as companions, which can alleviate the problem of only having one member of a herd animal by itself), and the chickens love the horse poop.
Our horse/chicken yard fence was finished last week, and M started building a chicken house on Friday. It's not quite finished, but we decided to bring down the chickens last night anyway. Now the chickens have an over 50 by 80 yard, including an orange tree and soon a very nicely built chicken coop.

can you find all six chickens?
We didn't make it back last night till after dark, so some of the chickens didn't make it out of the cage we transported them in when they settled down for the night. The chickens went to sleep in pairs.
Things looked very good by morning light.

Through the fence.

The yard with the orange tree.

Future chicken coop.

Shady Spot.
I've checked on the chickens three times since I woke up - they seem to be settling in fine, I'm just a worry wort ;-).