Welcome to The Hearty Hen House
Hobby Farming at its finest!
Not all animals were created equally. Many species have digestion systems that are unique and fitted for the environment they lived in, in the wild. We have domesticated these animals over the years and changed their eating habits. In an effort to make sure our animals are getting the nutrients they need, it’s a good idea, no matter how uninteresting it may seem, to understand their inner workings. Our goal is to raise healthy, beautiful, productive animals.
So, you decided to raise chickens. You have your plan in place for acquiring some chicks, preparing the chick nursery, and building the chicken coop. When we started raising chickens, we did so with three objectives in mind: 1) to be more self-reliant, 2) help with the food budget, and 3) teach our sons some important life skills.
Nowadays, with all the things you hear and read about raising chickens, it seems like an expensive endeavor. You might actually be wondering if it’s just not a better idea to buy your eggs at the store. There are other reasons to raise chickens besides possible cost savings. There are health benefits…you know where your eggs came from. Farm fresh eggs taste better. Caring for chickens can be fun, they are quite animated and entertaining to watch. And raising chickens doesn’t have to be expensive if you don’t want it to be. Our first chicken coop was framed out of wood pallets that were free!
Now that you have figured out whether or not you are getting baby chicks and when, it’s time to start thinking about and preparing for where you are going to keep them. You want to make sure that your chick quarters are conducive to their health and well-being. When we got our first batch of baby chicks twenty-some years ago, we got a plastic kiddie pool, put some sawdust in the bottom, pulled a chair up next to it that we could hook a heat lamp to and called it good. Surprisingly, all but one chick survived. The next attempt involved a cardboard box, and then we tried a round plastic tub that sat on top of the washing machine in the laundry room with the heat lamp hooked on to the cupboard door. That set up worked fine, except on laundry days. The point here being that any kind of container and set up that works for you and keeps your chickens safe and warm will be just fine, you don’t have to buy or build an expensive set up.
I struggle leaving home to go on a vacation. Seems like nobody takes care of my animals like I do…except my sister-in-law. She gets 5 stars for her efforts‼ When we go away, even if it’s only for a few days, I worry that something might go wrong. I consider my substitute caregiver successful if all my animals survive, whether the caregiver does all the right things…or not.
A few years ago I began to notice a decrease in egg production without any real reason as to why. In trying to figure out what was going on, I started watching my chickens very closely. My first clue was a hen with egg on her face! Then one morning I actually caught another hen in the act of eating an egg. So the challenge, and major research, was on‼
