Chicken Update

We started our Chicken Farming Journey with 6 chicks. Re-read about them HERE (and notice their poultry pedicures) After a few months, we bought 4 laying hens to start getting eggs. To see the Hens in their $500 hen-house click HERE.

As our chicks aged, we discovered 5 were roosters. Of all the bad luck, I tell you! Damian killed one with his bare hands by slowly strangling it to death. It was creepy and weird to watch that, and not the most humane way to kill an animal. He plucked it and cooked Rooster Soup. It tasted fine, but none of the kids would eat it. And I couldn't bring myself to eat seconds.

We needed to get rid of the rest; they picked on and ate more than the hens and their crowing drove us bonkers. Whoever said roosters only crow when the sun comes up was wrong! Roosters crow BEFORE the sun comes up and all day/night long.

Damian didn't have the heart (guts) to kill more by strangle method. Apparently, the best way to kill a chicken is to chop off it's head or swing the bird by it's neck, using the weight of it's body to snap the neck. So we argued. I wanted the other 4 roosters gone, but Damian didn't think it was right to kill them if we weren't going to eat them. So one by one, he'd put them in a bag and let them out in the woods on his way to work. He figured if an animal ate them, at least they weren't going to waste. I thought that was cruel, but was thrilled they were gone. Eventually, after leaving 3 in the woods, he killed the last one with the neck snapping method.

Now we were down to 1 grown chick, Katrina's "Shelly" and 3 laying hens, because 1 of our 4 hens died from heat exhaustion or something!!?? After starting with 10 birds, we were down to 4.

Katrina's "Shelly" recently matured enough to lay eggs. Teeny Tiny Eggs. They are so cute. Katrina is holding a jumbo egg from an OLD hen, and "Shelly's" first egg on the right.


We get between 2-4 eggs a day. We have one hen that flies and each day she'd fly out of the coop and lay the light blue/grey egg in a bowl on our back porch. We got tired of all her poo everywhere, so we put a net over the coop yard, rather than clipping her wings. I just like looking at "Shelly's" little tiny eggs. Soon, she'll start laying one everyday and it'll be normal sized.