Birds of a Feather

The laying hens have quietly (not literally, as they can be somewhat noisy sometimes!) moved through the pastures on the farm this spring and summer, doing their thing with generally less fanfare than the cows seem to.

We use the tractor to pull the mobile buildings to fresh pasture 1-2 times per week. Here's a photo from this spring...the time when one of the chickens decided to ride rather than walk :D .

It's been a while since I've counted, but I think we've probably got somewhere around 230 hens these days. The red ones have been laying since March of 2025 and the white ones since June of 2025. So if you've been wondering why there haven't been as many bulk egg options in recent weeks, it's because they've been producing pretty steadily for well over a year without too much of a break and their productivity is slowing down some. Additionally, hens that have been laying a long time without molting can have eggshells that aren't as strong. Even though they have access to a calcium supplement, some eggs we collect right now just aren't strong enough to package for sale and transport. So those get used by the farmers, the cats and dogs, and the pigs!

Some of them have been molting this summer, which affects egg production during that process. A large number of them also went broody (meaning they only want to sit on eggs and hatch chicks--but since we don't even keep a rooster, that is a pointless endeavor!), and broody hens usually aren't laying either.

At least twice this year I've had the chickens on higher ground for a few weeks, and the weather was generally drier for at least part of that time. Then both times when they finished that part of the pasture and needed to move into the lower ground, we got a bunch of rain! Including last week.

We didn't get nearly as much as folks in other parts of the state, but still got between 7 and 8 inches in a week's time. Our hearts go out to all who have suffered as a result of the terrible flooding!

Our chickens had to pretend to be ducks for a couple days, as it was too wet to even move the buildings with the tractor for a little while.

When we move the shelters forward a short distance, we can do it when the hens are all outside, moving very very slowly and trying our best to keep from running over a chicken in the process. But they make it quite challenging because they like to chase the bugs the tractor tires apparently scare up! 

If we have to move them very far, we need to change the timer on the automatic door so they stay inside until we're finished. That means we have to do the moving at daylight because the coop they sleep in has no feeders, waterers or nests and they are ready to bust outta there after the sun comes up!

One day recently we did move them with everyone inside. However, to complicate matters even more, there are quite a number of hens who have gotten in the habit of roosting outside in the open feeder/nest buildings at night instead of going inside. So Doug and I went out close to dark the night before to catch 50 or so chickens and put them back in the roost house for the night. 

The other evening as the sun was going down I had to snap a photo of this winged rebel because her silhouette just added a little something to the sunset ;) .

Because these girls are getting rather far along in their laying cycle, our farmhand Jesse Wagler agreed to raise a new batch of pullets for us this summer. The chicks hatched in June and should start laying this fall (probably mostly in October/November). They fixed up a brooder in their horse stalls but need to get the pullets moved out to pasture so they can learn to forage.

One of our portable chicken houses has been empty this year, so we told Jesse they could borrow it until they're ready to come live at our place. The trick was figuring out how to get it there.

It doesn't disassemble.

It is quite heavy.

It's not on wheels.

And there's a creek and lots of fences between our place and his.

So we were trying to come up with a plan for how to get the building on a trailer, but our resources available were coming up short.

Dad and Jesse both suggested checking with another neighbor, Lynn, to see if we could borrow his gooseneck flatbed trailer and truck since it was already hooked up. He generously said yes, so then we got to work lifting and loading the chicken house.

Jesse and his dad Martin used their lift and our loader tractor to lift the building off the ground. Then I backed the trailer underneath it and they set it down. Finally we were ready for transport!

I slowly headed down the road (and amazingly enough, no traffic came through at the time!), and this is how it looked as it went by!

Now, this may not be something we'll want to do on a regular basis, so the next time Jesse raises pullets he might want to have his own large mobile pen ;) . But in just a few weeks, we'll be moving that chicken house back up the road so the new girls will be ready to lay lots of eggs for you!

No shortage of adventures on the farm!