There are 13 chickens living on my farm... I phrase it that way, because my neighbor purchased 6 chickens in the spring of last year, by the end of summer they had all decided to move here and since my neighbor did nothing to retrieve them, they now live on my farm.  To this day, my neighbor is free to come get the rooster and two hens that survive from that original group.  But they've grown up essentially wild (I don't feed them) and I have no idea of how he'd catch them, let alone convince them to stay over there.

Initially, they thought my front porch was a good place to roost.  I was not at all happy with that!  After some persistent and creative badgering they decided to stay off the porch, much better.  Now the wild ones roost in my garage and spend their days going about their business on the farm.

When I wasn't paying attention, the hens became mature... I figured this out the day that I grabbed for a tool, only to find it embedded in a pile of 15 eggs of unknown ages.  Imagine the joy of stepping back in a stall to hear that distinct squishy crack that only a nest of eggs can make.  Never again will I just 'hop' onto my tractor seat without looking first.  My new hobby was looking for the 'current nest' to dispose of it before it attracted raccoons, damaged something, or just exploded into a smelly mess.   Each time I disrupted the nest long enough, they found a new place.  Eventually, they used the hay that was being stored for winter... this was tolerable, so I left them stay there.

Then, late November, the black hen became maternal and decided this is the PERFECT time to hatch out some of these chicks.  She was absolutely devoted to the nest and stood her ground, even to the point of letting me pet her.  Since she was being so friendly, I didn't have the heart to take the eggs from her.  Instead, I set up a cheap dog box on top of the hay as a nest.  I gently moved the eggs into it and placed her on top of them. I was sure this would be enough to make her abandon the idea of hatching them, but nope.  This little hen fluffed herself down over those eggs and stuck to it. The other hens never gave her a break and she seemed to be going without water and food, so I started bringing her water and chicken food each day.

December was going to get really cold and I needed to feed the hay, so I set up a ‘chicken coopÂ’ of sorts in a small unused workshop and bought a heat lamp for them.  Finally, on a horribly cold day, 11 of the 19 eggs hatched out alive.  This is the first I've seen chicks hatched and I was absolutely facinated with them.  I spent the day monitoring the progress and disposing of the eggs that didn't make it.  Over the next couple weeks, that poor hen tolerated me picking her up to shake the chicks out of her feathers and play with them countless times.  

Now, theyÂ’ve all survived the winter in the chicken coop.  On warmer days, they are learning to go out to 'be chickens'  and return to the coop at night.  Because IÂ’ve handled them all since hatching, they are like a litter of puppies. They crowd around me when I enter the coop and follow me around outside the coop.  IÂ’ve been slowly increasing their distance from the coop to make sure they know how to get ‘homeÂ’ at night.  At this point, they're a bit spoiled and run back to the coop anytime something scares them or even the slightest hint of rain or snow. I'm really looking forward to this summer when they can go out in the morning to do their chores and be snuggled safe back inside the coop at night (in the early stages of training, I lost one to a neighbor dog). 

I don't want to be running electric every winter to keep them warm, so I'm hoping to build a real chicken coop this summer that includes a passive solar heating system based on the box heater designs.  Hopefully, it will be nice enough to convice even the wild pair to abandon my garage.

Anyway, that's the chickens and how the got here.  God knew I needed additional bug controls.  The excess eggs are going to members of my church who can use them.  I have a ratio of 1:1 between chickens and horses, if I could train the chickens to each to follow a horse around and scratch out the poop right there as it falls... that would be absolutely perfect, but its not too bad as it is right now