Lucy and Ethel

Casa de Pollo

Time to break out the overalls, straw hat, and boots...we're officially farmers!  Nothing beats the taste of farm-fresh eggs so we figured we would give chicken farming a whirl. Here's how to have farm-fresh eggs in 3 easy steps.

1. Housing.

Since we're renting for now we didn't want to build a full-sized chicken coop and came across a pretty neat solution: the chicken tractor.  The chicken tractor is sort of like a hen house on wheels--there is a large, open grazing area (well, open but with chicken wire covering) and a covered nesting box area.  The chicken tractor had some serious benefits over the traditional hen house. 1) The open floor allows the chickens access to fresh grass--so they're semi-free range.  2) The chickens' "business" will help fertilize our lawn as we move it around the yard. 3) When our house sells and we move we only have to pack up the birds and haul away the tractor rather than dismantling an entire coop.  4) Our landlords were impressed that we could think up and build the tractor that they're considering one for their own yard.

Since we had a lot of spare lumber, shingles, and wheels just laying around we only had to purchase the chicken wire, hatch latch and paint: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!  After looking at some plans online, Joel set about constructing our chicken tractor and thus Casa de Pollo is born....all we needed now were the chickens.

Lucy and Ethel
Lucy (standing near the door-has more red "hair")
Ethel (in the nesting box-a little bald on top)

2. Chickens.

Yeah, just needed the chickens...a somewhat simple task in theory.  In actuality, this step proved harder than building a chicken tractor and teaching the dog that it wasn't his new outdoor playpen.  Chickens apparently don't "do well" if they're by themselves, so we needed at least a pair.  Since it's only the Hubs and myself (and we don't eat eggs and bacon every morning) we certainly couldn't handle more than 2.

First option: purchasing from farm supply store in the Spring.  There's apparently a minimum purchase requirement at most tractor & farm supply stores so seeing as we didn't have the space for 25 chicks, we had to look elsewhere.  Next option: a friend with more chickens than he could shake a stick at.  But, since he had a recent fox-chicken incident the "more chickens than he could shake a stick at" quickly dwindled to 3...all roosters.  Last option: Craigslist.  We found a local lady with all sorts of fowl, goats, and cattle who had 1) no minimum purchase and 2) female layers.  So, long story short-- after 4 months, welcome to "Casa de Pollo" Lucy and Ethel.

3. Eggs.

isn't it cute!?!

Um, I don't really think there's any magical wisdom that I could impart about how to get eggs...we had Lucy and Ethel home for about an hour and we had our first egg.  I guess it would be good to make sure that you have *female* chickens, use a layer formulated feed, and give them a nice cozy, warm area to pop 'em out!

Now...I'm off to find enough recipes that use eggs since we'll be averaging about a dozen a week!