One Year Later

Its amazing to me that we have had our chickens for almost a year now. It has flown by so fast!
The hens made it through this rather mild Tennessee winter without ever completely stopping their egg laying. We joked that they took turns taking a few days off. They averaged 2 eggs per day during the coldest weeks of winter. Just before this warm weather arrived we had several days of no eggs at all, and now, on the first day of spring, we are seeing them return to 4 eggs per day.

This winter, our only major event of interest with the hens involved a visitng family of
rats who had a taste for chicken feed. They found a way under our chicken wire and were
helping themselves by climbing into the hens' feeder. This rodent break-in was really my fault, because I had gotten lazy about shutting up the coop every night. (Sometimes I wouldn't remember that I hadn't locked up the coop until I was already in bed....and at that point, it wasn't going to happen!) The rat problem however, was solved mostly by our dog, who, we discovered, is quite adept at catching and killing rats. So they didn't last long. Thanks Max!

These warm days of early spring remind of me of this time last year when we were adding the finishing touches to our coop so it would be ready to house our four Rhode Island Red pullets. When I look at the pictures of the coop BEFORE the hens arrived, and look at my coop NOW, I can't believe it was EVER that clean!!

I am planning to do a deep spring cleaning of the coop (scrubbing, clorox, water hose, etc.) very soon, so the hens will have a whole 'nother year to dirty it up again.