Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Here Chickie, Chickie, 1 by hart

hart wrote:
Yes, I'm up to my eyeballs in eggs. I get anywhere from 5-9 every day from after moulting in the spring until they stop laying in the winter. Everybody I know gets free eggs and they're so tickled to get them because they're beyond description better than what's at the store.

Debbie, allowing your chickens to just range around all the time is asking for disaster. I've lost too many to neighborhood dogs. My chickens have a nice big fenced area, completely fenced and with plastic deer netting over the top to keep out hawks.

I let them out every now and then to peck around in the yard but only when I'm there to watch them. BTW, the FDA definition of free range only means they have access to a chicken yard and aren't kept in a cage every moment of their entire lives. So those free range eggs you buy at the store just means the chickens might have had a half hour a day outside of their cages.

Let's see, I have a picture of the yard somewhere.