Triumph (and sometimes trouble) at the henhouse
Sure, right now we’re savoring autumn in east Tennessee (and many other places), but the balmy temps will soon drop. Maybe your first chicks are big girls now and you’re thinking What do we do when it gets really cold? Maybe, like our first brood, it hasn’t crossed your mind just yet. In either case,…
This story begins with some bad, sad, hard news: in early December we lost one of our two sweet tiny twins to an in-coop hawk attack. More about “coop maintenance (super hard) lessons learned” to come. This left our sweet Renata a tiny gal without a tiny pal. Chicken body language can be ambivalent at…
I have written quite a bit about the triumphs and near losses of raising chickens, but friends, it all exists. The subtitle of this website is “Triumph (and sometimes Trouble) at the Henhouse.” I chose this for two reasons: My favourite Canadian band, The Tragically Hip, released an album in the 90’s called Trouble at…
Chickens are tiny rototillers. Chickens are lightly domesticated velociraptors. Chickens are annihilators of insecta and annelida—annihilators with hyper-focused intensity. Chickens are not gardeners. Gardening with chickens? Before you read more, may I suggest Metallica’s Seek and Destroy. A chicken’s mission is to gobble up every bug, worm, grub, leaf, fruit, and whatever other nourishment it…