Ceaberry's Monday Musings: Inheriting Chickens

This weekend our flock grew from 16 to 57 plus 5 ducks. We inherited a flock from friends that are moving. Now my coops are not set up to house 57 chickens and 5 ducks, nor are my runs. However, we are fixing that as soon as we can and actually the big coop seems to be handling the influx just fine. For some reason, 15 or so chickens from the new flock refuse to go into the coop at night (although they lay eggs in the nesting boxes inside the coop). The ducks just can't physically get into the coop. I will be remedying these things in a short while since winter is coming very soon.

So we got a message on Friday to say that our friends were willing to part with their flock. We didn't know then they were moving so I and Mr. Native Farmer decided on at least 3 chickens we were going to buy. My mother came up since my husband and father-in-law were moving the rest of our cattle home. We loaded up the van with two crates and two children excited to go see chickens. I had the map loaded up to get there, it wasn't hard but they live a bit back in the woods and I had never driven there by myself.

We get to their house and were talking with my friend, who told us she was moving. I asked her how many chickens she had, she said 30 chickens... well, after getting everyone it was 41 chickens. We have enough knowledge of chicken owners that a few may go to a different home but for now, they are all part of our flock.

We had just lost a silkie hen to a raccoon only a day before and one of our silkie hens turned into a rooster so we had 5 roos already on the farm and she guessed she had 4-5 roos. We told them to give us a price for all the chickens, and somehow ducks got added into this price and a new small coop. Now if you know me, I was adamant against ducks but here I was loading 5 into the back of my mom's van. C'est la vie.

Two trips and we got them all except 5 that were roaming around. Now, me and Mr. Native farmer went back the next day and got the coop and the 5 chickens we left, including a one-eyed rooster. The chickens were surprisingly clean, it was the ducks that made a mess of my mom's van.

So they all made it through the night, and we got 22 eggs the first day of having them here. 22 eggs... we normally get just 3 eggs!! Quiches and frozen eggs here I come! Just kidding, I will be doing some of that but we have some to sell, some to give to friends, and of course, it is how I pay my mother back for setting up our now chicken farm.

Now for the array of colors, we got today. The first picture has the 4 we ate for breakfast in it and the second picture is of the other eggs minus those four plus one more we got a bit later. As you can see we got some Marans (the chocolate egg), a mint egg layer (she is a white beautiful easter egger), and an olive egger (we don't know who she is just yet but I have my suspicions).

Here is the flock in our large coop run. Yes, I know it is A LOT of chickens in one space but they were used to each other so not really a lot of fighting and no pecking either. They get plenty of water sources and food, plus fresh treats like apples and squash which they demolished. As you can see from the pictures they love to congregate in the extension so it looks more jammed then it really is, there is the whole original run plus under the coop they seem to just not like going to, granted I was near them and they learned quickly I have the food.

Happy Homesteading.