Chickens Need A Home

Our plan is to add chickens to the farm in the spring. We’ll raise them for the eggs and let them keep the bug population down. Maybe they can also cultivate and fertilize some of the growing areas too.

Fortunately, the barn on the property has a portion set aside as a chicken coop that then leads out to a sizable chicken run. My wife and kids did the dirty work of cleaning out the barn, which was a bit of a mess from the previous owners. Now the rehab is happening to the coop and run. I’ll be installing new poultry netting and other barriers to keep the predators out of the chickens’ refurbished home.

Justin Rhoades, in Ashville, NC, has a great video blog on Abundant Permaculture. I’m learning a lot about chickens and other farm life from his homestead approach. I’ve also picked up a few books at the local library so that we can start of raising the chick the right way.

We haven’t decided what breeds we are going to get. I suppose we need to figure out what we want because the hatcheries start taking pre-orders as early as December.