Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Chicken Snow

This has been a crazy winter and spring here in Virginia.  One day it is 70+, the next day 5 inches of snow, and then another day of 70+ temperatures.  Although every other day feels like either spring or winter, we know that spring is near.  This is confirmed by the arrival of chicks at all the Tractor Supply Co. and Southern States stores.  That's chicken chicks, not the other kind.

This morning I received a text from my meat chicken co-conspirator, letting me know that it was starting to look like "Chicken Snow". You may be wondering, "What exactly is Chicken Snow?", which is exactly what I was thinking as I read the text.

Chicken snow?

He was kind enough to follow up with a full definition:

Chicken Snow -n. A snow event in which you accumulate more chickens than actual inches of snow.  

Once the boys learned that school was closed for the day, they connected with the meat chicken co-conspirator and his boys to head to the farm stores.  It didn't take them long to end up with small Happy Meal sized boxes full of chicks.


Once home and in the makeshift brooder, our second annual journey of egg chickens had begun.  In keeping with our eclectic flock of chickens, we added some new breeds.  To our existing two Barred Rocks, Black Australorp and two Ameraucanas, we added three Rhode Island Reds, three White Leghorns, two Brown Leghorns and three more Barred Rocks.  This will help increase our flock to get more eggs, while getting some white egg layers and some more prolific egg layers.  Hopefully this will allow us to get more eggs so we will be able to supply more customers than our current one regular customer, in addition to our family.

They are small now, but come June or July, we should be enjoying white and brown jumbo eggs.  Now where are we going to put them once they get out of the brooder?  Hmmm.  Haven't thought that far through.  I guess I better get building on the new expanded chicken condo!

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