Sunday, September 9, 2012

Hubby's Ingenuity

Our chickens stay in a coop and run. We can not allow our chickens to free range due to predators and dogs in the neighborhood. When I use the term neighborhood, I use it loosely because we live on a gravel road with only 4 neighbors. Unfortunately up the road from us other homes allow their dogs to run free and we learned the hard way a couple of years ago when two dogs we had never seen before came down to the house and killed our rabbit that was outside in a pen. To make a long story short we have to supply all the greens and extras for the chickens to eat. When the garden is producing it is no bigger, but in the Fall and Winter we have to buy the greens. With the escalation of prices of produce and other food we decided to take a new tactic. We have lots of weeds growing in other parts of the woods on our property that the chickens can't reach. Here is where the ingenuity comes in (on my husband's part). There is one weed in particular that they like. Hubby grabbed a bunch and wired it to the fencing to give the birds something to do while eating.



Does anyone want to take a guess what kind of chicken this is, and if it looks like a hen or rooster. I believe the chicken is about 5 months old. No crowing as of yet. We also have 4 of Betty's eggs about to hatch tomorrow. Hoping they are mostly like Betty and nothing like the daddy.

1 comment:

Staci@LifeAtCobbleHillFarm said...

Hmmm.....not sure about the chicken/rooster. you can also use bird suet feeders to put greens in and hang them on the outdoor coop. Keeps them busy for a while. :)