Chickens!

When we moved into this house on this great property nearly 5 years ago, we were excited over the idea of having a farm.  Or at least a garden.  Our first farming experience?  Chickens.

One Wednesday evening at church a friend who needed to get rid of his chickens offered them to my husband.  He accepted.  So late that night, chickens in truck, he built a chicken tractor.  (If you are unfamiliar with that term, check back, I'll do a post on the tractor at a later date.)

After the setting in period, we began getting eggs.  It was really pretty cool.  They didn't produce enough to keep up totally in eggs, but enough to be a major contributor to our egg consumption.  And they were beautiful, rich, dark eggs. 

Then suddenly, they began to die.  One by one, we would find a carcass in the tractor.  Nothing was getting in and attacking them, they just died. 

The following spring we bought babies and all the stuff to have chickens.  They grew well for a while, then, one by one began to disappear.  One was clearly maimed but survived the attack.  One morning we found a chicken was missing but there was blood spatter.  It was pretty gross.

So, we lost every chicken in a matter of days to some critter.  We couldn't quite figure out how it was getting in and back out with a chicken, but alas, they all disappeared.

From this we learned that we probably better rebuild our tractor before we get more chickens.  It's a real shame, too.  The kids really enjoyed the chickens!