Chicken Chores

My parents have a 5-acre hobby farm which, when we were growing up, was home to cows, pigs and chickens.  Now that my parents are retired, there's only chickens.  But those are the creatures we must now feed!

Oreo!  A Dutch Lakenvelder that was a free "exotic chicken" in Dad's chicky order.

I love the way I was raised and I love the way my parents farmed.  We were and still remain an organic farm.  Nature knows best.  That's why the chickens are cage free, free range chickens.  We do lock them in the coop at night because of predators (there's owls, coyotes, raccoons, skunks - a lot of creatures who enjoy a good chicken dinner!) but as soon as I wake up, I run down to the barn and let them out for the day.

This is what free-range chickens should look like:

The chickens spend the day outside scratching and eating and grazing.  We have never had to worry about ticks or other bugs in the ground because our chickens go from the back of the house to the front to the far back of the property.  They cover the entire farm from North to South and East to West and back over and over and over again daily.  The results are not only bug-free fields but we get the best, dark yellow (almost orange) yolk eggs that have lower cholesterol and better taste than the ones purchased at the store.  Yes, I know.  We are very lucky and I never take that for granted. 

Graze, Chickies, graze!