There has been lots of change in the lives of our farm fowl this Fall! The duck area hit an all time high of messiness and mud and we decided to find a better home for the ducks. Luckily, we found a good home for them down in the Harrisburg area, at Earth Spring Farm. They now have a big barn and a pond to play in, so even though we miss their loud quacks, they are better off.

The chickens didn’t have such a fairy tale ending. Several factors led to our decision to have some of the chickens butchered. During the early snow storm back in October, our coop netting collapsed. The coop was a mess and wasn’t doing its job of keeping the chickens inside their yard. The chicken tractor, where we kept the “puffheads”, was destroyed from Ruby jumping on it. We also had several chickens, mostly the Araucanas, that had not been laying any eggs for a while. We decided that it would make life easier and be practical if we got rid of some of them. So we packed them up one morning and took them to the butchers. We have been using them for homemade food for the dogs and Liam has made a really good chicken corn chowder. Since we need food for the dogs, it makes the most sense to raise it ourselves. We decided that we will be getting a batch of broilers in the spring and so the old duck Hilton will be put to good use.

The 8 chickens that we have left are living the good life. Since there are less of them, they get a larger share of the table scraps and we let them roam in the garden for the winter. They have a new heater for their waterer and so life is good.