Our 1st ever chickens laid their 1st ever eggs for us as Christmas presents.  Since then I've discovered that our organic, free range chicken eggs do not incapacitate me with stomach pain, the way the store bought eggs have been treating me.   For the last 6 years I could not eat more than a egg a week without suffering severe stomach pain.  Now I'm having 2 egg sandwiches for breakfast most days.  hooray!. 

Our hens are mobile.  They have spent time in 3 of our garden areas over the winter.  We fence them in to highlight the area we want them to work & poop; once the ground has been worked up we move them to a new area.  Soon they will be heading closer to the house and further from the garden.  We can't have them free ranging our direct sown spring seedlings.  They easily find their way out of our fence when they want and return when they want, I suppose I could fix that but then they wouldn't be free rangers anymore.  We want them to be able to eat ticks and bugs throughout the property so they need to free range some. 

Our Guinea's refuse to leave the chicken fence and coop.  They're the Juggalo's of the farm.  Rude, asshole goofy looking fuckers... but good people.  They constantly harass the chickens and aren't really doing their job.  They should be outside of the fence all day and night, being the wild animals they are.... eating all the ticks...  but their not..  We started with 12 baby Guinea's, 16 hens and a rooster.   We tried to raise the Guinea's separate from the chickens but had to combine them when the Guinea's proved to be too stupid to stay alive in a cage when a coon came around so we had to move them in with the chickens so we could protect the survivors, now they won't leave.    Were considering getting some adult Guinea's to release on the farm but are afraid the the ones we have will teach new ones to free load too. 

We're now down to 2 Guinea's, and 10 hens.     :~(

RIP Punky Rooster, Sid Caesar, Sid Hatfield and Spike Jones

February 3rd we had a chicken massacre 4 dead 1 wounded.  We're unsure what type of critter did it, probably a hawk or opossum.  Based on the remains we've ruled out coon & neighbor dog, but it appears Zynga thinks it was a neighbor dog.  She ran to the edge of the property on both sides and had barking conversations with them shortly after her dead comrades were removed.  Spike Lee is in the ICU (shop) with an ass wound and busted leg.