Author: Anna & Mark

Mark and I enjoyed a tour of the diverse Laughing Water Farm
recently, and of course I was intrigued by the free-range chickens
wandering here, there, and everywhere.  We didn’t get a chance to
see the Salatin-style egg-mobile,
which had been dragged to a far pasture just the week before we came to
visit, but there were still chickens wandering around the barns and
outbuildings (along with a few eye-catching turkeys).



I’m always on the lookout for which chicken breeds pull their weight under farm conditions, so I made a mental note that Australorps
were winners there just like they are on our homestead.  However, I
couldn’t quite guess the breed of the small, cream-colored hen pictured
above.  When asked, Antoinette replied, “Oh, she’s a
survivor.”  Yep, that’s probably the true homestead hen — a mutt
who manages to rustle up her own grub, raise some kids, and keep happily
scratching through the deep bedding in the pig barn.

I
always get a kick out of the first pullet egg of the year.  In
2014, our young ladies started their productive careers at 18 weeks of
age, seven days younger than when I wrote this post a couple of years ago about when to expect your first eggs.



I liked this shot because Mark captured our new rain barrel
as well as the tiny egg.  Rain barrels aren’t really
chicken-related…except that this barrel has been primarily used for
filling buckets of water to carry to the chicken coop.  It’s
astonishing how many steps a rain barrel can save over the course of
just a few weeks.  If you’re sick of carrying water, adding a rain barrel near (or on) your chicken coop can make your life much easier!