starts now

Most of our laying hens arrive on the farm as day old chicks. We order them as sorted peepers, only receiving females.

Sometimes we get them as adults from other places, and those hens are usually the sex links...not really red, not buff, somewhere in between.

We started a batch of Rhode Island Red hens last summer. Tiny balls of fluff when they arrive, these girls are now big, sturdy and have just started to lay eggs. Yesterday they had a dozen in the nest box. Muddy, because it has been raining or misting or foggy everyday for a bit now, the ground is not frozen, so they aren't so much scratching as slogging these days.

Always lovely when new eggs commence. These are still the little ones, by next week they will be full sized enough to go into the cartons.