Getting Started

We moved from suburban Carlsbad, CA (northern San Diego County) to rural New Hampshire in the early spring of 2007. Our new home is a modest cape on 76 acres along a country road in the Lakes Region.

The previous owner had built a chicken coop and kept a flock of layers. On moving day, he offered to leave some chickens for us. Catherine said, "Sounds great, but not more than a dozen." The previous owner set us up with a 3-gallon waterer, a hanging feeder, a 50-pound bag of feed and about 10 minutes of instructions on how to keep the chickens alive. We were chicken farmers. Or is it egg farmers? I still don't know which we are.

The day after we moved in, we were eating the freshest, most delicious eggs we had ever had in our lives! What a treat!

Our 2007 flock consisted of nine hens and three roosters. The hens were a mixed bag: a couple of Barred Rocks and a bunch of scraggly Ameraucana. The roosters were an awesome Barred Rock and two fancy shmancy bantams. Each day, we got a handful of brown and blue-green eggs.

Our flock was free-range. Each morning, we let the flock out of the coop to wander the property (and sometimes across the street). They ate lots of bugs and pooped everywhere. Each evening, they would return to roost in the coop and we would close the door overnight to keep them safe. Our dogs quickly became obsessed with eating chicken poop and would search high and low for a tasty morsel in the yard.

This worked out pretty well, although we did have a couple of incidents. A couple of times the flock scattered with great fanfare as some sort of predator was sighted. When the coast was clear, the roosters would go to the coop and call the girls home. There were a few of these scares with no harm done, although on one occasion one of the hens was killed and gutted, probably by a coyote. On another occasion, one of the hens got a mauled wing - I found her being licked tenderly by one of our Aussies (Pumpkin Pie). When I found her, I thought she was dead; unfortunately I had to help her along. To make matters worse, I had to do it during a conference call for work - fortunately I was able to mute my cell phone...

Overall, things went smoothly through the spring and summer. However, our egg production (which was always questionable) began to have serious issues. Eventually, we were feeding ten birds and getting only a couple of eggs a day.

Important lesson: If someone is happy to give you a dozen chickens, don't be surprised if they are a bunch of old ladies that are nearly done laying.

It was at that point that we decided it was time to reboot the flock.