Hen House Hop

Deborah Jean is having the first annual Hen House Hop over at Dandelion House and I am joining in. 

I am giving you fair warning this is going to be a long post.  I could not decide what to leave out.  We have been asked to give our story of how we started keeping chickens, show our hen house and share pictures of our feathered ladies.  When we sold our home in the city and moved to our house here in the woods I told hubs  I would like to  keep chickens.  We lived here a couple years before we were able to build a hen house.  Hubs did the research and designed it and built it himself.   It was built, painted and ready late fall of 2009.  I ordered my first chicks spring of 2010.

Day One Spring of 2010

I started out with 15, lost one and gave my daughter 2 to add to her flock.  We had 12 for a full year, lost 1 to a fox and 1 died from unknown reasons.  When I cleaned out the hen house last week I took some pictures to share today.

Door to egg boxes.

I grow planters of flowers on this shelf during the summer months.

 

The run off the back of the hen house.

Inside the run.

 Would you like to see the inside of the hen house?  There is nothing fancy, I have not added any frills although I think about it when I see some of your hen house decor.

Loft and egg boxes.

The ladies roost on the right side.

Food storage in the corner as you come in the door.

I named about half of my hens after mine and hubs deceased grandmothers and the rest took a little time to come up with but they all have a name. 

Esther, Black Jersey Giant

Florence Barred Rock

Garnet is a Welsummer

 

I have three Buff Orpinton's, the one above is Sweet Mary.

Helen still looks a little ruff from the fox attach.

This is Ethel, she is very loud and runs for me each time I come out of the house.

 There was another red Welsummer named Lucy but she disappeared after the fox attach.  Most of my hens were very friendly and liked me to pick them up until this past spring.  Quite a few of them were missing feathers and we thought we had mites in the hen house.  We went through quite a few dusting's and other treatments and now they do not want me to pick them up so much.  When it was all said and done, I bought a flock block for the hen house and they have all started growing their feathers back.  Seems I have one or more bored bullies in the house.

Millie and Tillie, Gold Laced Wyandottes.  Tillie was almost bare from lack of feathers a month ago.

Dottie, Ameraucana and you have met Esther.

Lou, Ameraucana #2 and Florence

After the fox attack this past spring we do not let the girls out for the complete day.  But later in the afternoon if the weather is nice, the fox shows up on overcast days, they get out to scratch around the yard for a 2-3 hours.

They really like to scratch in the leaves that boarder the woods that surrounds our yard.

 When we had the full dozen healthy and happy we got beautiful eggs like this daily.

All the hens are getting their feathers back and starting to look their beautiful selves again. The above pictures of the chickens were taken last week  We are only getting around 3 eggs a day right now because of the daylight shortening.  Last year we had lighting on a timer but this year I am going to let them rest in hopes of some larger egg production in the spring.  I hope you enjoyed the hen house tour.  Thank you for stopping by and hop on over to Deborah Jean's Dandelion House to check out the other hen house's that are joining the hop.  Blessings to you  from our home in the woods!