As summer comes to a close

In these last few days of summer and as we prepare for the winter months here in Wisconsin, I really love seeing my chickens out in the gardens. The vegetables are pretty much finished (except for the pumpkins) and the chickens take advantage of the bugs that remain… at least until the first frost.

Here’s a picture of one of our Production Reds on the front porch. She seems at home amongst the flowers and thankfully she wasn't interested in eating them!  I keep a couple extra bowls of water for the chickens out near the porch and shed. It takes a lot of water to create an egg each day!


Our weather is much cooler now, with daytime highs in the 60s and 70s. But in the "heat" of the afternoon, the chickens take advantage of the shade under the lilac bushes. There are a lot of good bugs to be found under bushes!

Tonight while doing chicken chores and getting the brooders ready, Jillian sang a song to our younger hens while collecting eggs. They seemed interested in kindergarten music. She picked up her first chicken (one of the 6-week old hens) on her own and did a great job, holding it correctly without any explanation on my part. The hen didn’t even seem to mind too much.

Tomorrow I’ll be picking up our last set of chicks for the year from Sunnyside Hatchery in Beaver Dam. We have used them for our meat chickens (their broilers are wonderful), but this time I also ordered 5 laying chicks. They won’t hatch until tomorrow and will only be a few hours old when we get them home. I set up a separate brooder for the laying chicks, since they eat a starter feed different from broiler chicks. Once they get settled in, I’ll post some pictures.