Eggsactly.....

One month from today I will be able to go get some new chicks to replace the hens I've lost this past year. 

I'm excited at the prospect of hearing all the little peeps and chirps in the brooding box again!  I won't panic this go around, or, not as much when I see a chick do a head dive into the pine chips and wonder if it died!  I'll know it's just taking a wee nap. 

Currently the hens I have are Plymouth Rocks  - two white and one barred.  They are a great cold hardy breed that lay medium to large brown eggs.  This time around I want to get three Americaunas (Easter egg hens) and three Rhode Island Reds.  Just want to mix it up a bit and they'll also be easier to tell apart!

The plan for 2011 layers is to acquire six new hens which will start to lay in the fall while the remaining three get us through spring and summer.  Just as the new girls start laying in earnest, the biddies will be ready to retire and let the young ones do all the work!  The biddies will be two and a half years old by then and their egg production should drastically reduce.  If not, I'll just have more eggs to share and eggs to freeze for later use.

As we nurture the youngs ones along here at the house, this will give us time to enlarge the current run.  The run and coop are more than large enough to house nine hens, but, the more room outside the better!  Currently the run is 8' x 20' and once we are done, the permanent run should be double that size.  Happy chickens lay tasty eggs! 

I would also like to talk the hubster into possibly making two chicken tractors this spring - one to let the laying hens free range safely around the yard during the day and one for the meat birds.   I'm sure if I ask real nice he'd be more than happy to construct two tractors...  maybe a lot of beer would be a better persuasion, eh?  I'm sooo bad....

In the meantime I have plenty to do to keep me occupied while I await the arrival of chicks to my local farm store which makes the employees of the store happy because I'm not constantly bugging them for the arrival date. 
I'm also happy to report I've gotten three eggs in the past week from the girls.  I haven't had eggs in over two months.  They must have seen me sneak that dozen eggs in I had to buy last week and started talking amongst themselves - "oh, we'd better stop slacking off", " I told you she had other hens hidden in the big house", and my favorite overheard cluck - "the sky is falling".

There's one in every bunch....