Joys of Our Backyard Chickens
Today I’d like to talk to ya’ll about our backyard chickens. We have been asked “Why do you have chickens?” One of the reasons of course is getting fresh eggs every day. Also, we really enjoy sitting on the back deck and watching them in their yard. They are a blast because they are so curious about everything.
Inside their yard we have 2 bee hives and a few fruit trees. You’ll look out there one time and they are on top of the hives. The next time they will be on top of some cinder blocks that are in the yard. We also have a run that we attach to the coop, that we use to keep the young chicks safe while they grow and fully feather out. It is also out in their yard that they like to jump on and walk around on. They also like to roost on there when the weather is nice enough.
Feeding & Watering
When we first got the girls, yes they are all hens. We use to go out to the yard everyday with fresh water and feed. That got to be very time consuming so we changed the waterer and feeder. We have the bottom of a plastic barrel that we use for their water. It is kept it in a shaded part of their yard so it stays as cool as possible in the summer heat. We also make sure the we drain it and scrub it clean once a month. A hose is ran from the house so we don’t have to carry buckets of water out there every day.
Another thing that we have done is build a feeder that holds enough feed for the week. It is made out of PVC and holds enough feed for a week. I will go into how we made it in another blog. Now that we have the bigger waterer and feeder, we can spend more time on other things like watching the hens play.
Keeping the Chickens Home
After all that work, we thought we could just sit back and enjoy the chickens. Then some of them decided that they wanted to be on the outside of their yard and started flying over the 6 foot fence that we have around them. We knew we could keep them safe on the inside of their yard but not so much on the outside. Now we periodically have to clip their wings back to keep them from flying over the fence. This doesn’t hurt them at all and they actually grow back.
At the End of the Day…
We highly recommend that you get chickens. Check your local codes to see if it is legal for you to have them, put in some elbow grease and enjoy. They are a great stress reliever after a long day.