Chickens, Turkeys, and Geese

Below are some pictures of our chicken-raising scheme. We started with chickens the moment we moved onto the place, as our then-landlords were kind enough to leave us a few laying hens. The taste of fresh eggs immediately made laying hens indispensable, so our first spring we bought about 20 day-old chicks to replace the older hens. We raised them in the back yard in an 8'x8' frame covered with chicken wire and floored with 1/2" hardware cloth. We fed them up on a commercial chick ration, and they eventually assumed their places at the nest (pullets) and on the dinner table (cockerels). We've since tried several other schemes for raising chicks, which I'll describe below, and come back around to an arrangement much like the original, but with some significant improvements. We've also long since stopped feeding any commercially prepared feed, since it all seems to contain meat by-products. For years now, we've "rolled our own" feed, a mix of cracked corn, whole oats, roasted soybeans, and fish meal. The proportions are varied according to the chickens' stage of life: more protein for young, growing chicks and for laying hens. The chickens also have access to the entire yard for part of the year (before and after garden, basically) and the rest of the time, they have a "salad bar" in their run. Vitamins are added periodically to their drinking water, and granite grit and oyster shell (for the layers, to provide calcium) are given free-choice year-round.