My little flock of hens lives in an eight by fifteen foot coop with six nest boxes and a big ladder style perch made from tree branches. A little chicken-sized door opens up to a fenced area, about 40 feet by 20 feet and six feet high. A normal door is on the other side for my access.

Water is kept outside except in the winter, and layer pellets (I use Blue Seal) are fed indoors from a hanging feeder so spills are kept to a minimum. Extras like grit and oyster shells (for calcium) are in small feed tubs indoors to keep dry, but kitchen scraps and other messy treats are fed in the yard and don’t last long!

Very little (okay, nothing) will grow in the concentrated area fenced around the coop, so my hens spend their days free-ranging around the yard. These girls are always busy: eating greens, hunting up bugs and doing chicken things.

This spring I’ve put a portable electric fence around my big garden, because my curious birds were very excited as I planted, following along behind me pulling up many of those fresh tender morsels almost as soon as I got them in the ground!

At first I worried about my birds being loose and vulnerable, but every evening as the sun heads down they mosey back home and I lock them in for the night. I have had one unfortunate chicken go the wrong direction in her daily explorations and managed to get hit by one of the few cars that go down our street. Of course, predators are more of a risk outdoors—weasels have claimed two chickens and a duck (vicious little creatures, no matter how cute they are!!), and we think a fox is responsible for another chicken disappearance. Weasels can get through the tiniest of spaces, though, and one casualty came about because the sneaky bugger climbed through the one inch fencing blocking the eaves and had made a nest in a storage cupboard in my coop. Try your hardest to secure fences and the coop, especially in late winter/early spring when wild animals seem to be at their most desperate.

New England winter didn’t seem to phase these tough girls a bit. Shavings and straw were tossed right on top of the old layer to build up insulation, rather than removed to the compost piles like the rest of the year. The biggest thing is water—making sure that there is fresh, unfrozen water at all times is essential! Three times a day I bring out a bucket of the hottest water my kitchen sink can produce, which cools quite a bit by the time I’m done breaking up and tossing out the ice from the last round. Other than water, my hens didn’t seem to have any issues with the cold. I was on the lookout for frostbite after being warned their combs and wattles are susceptible, but didn’t see anything this year.

The “Laying Ladies” are appropriately titled due to their first lady namesakes. And lay they do! These girls were hatched in March, and started producing eggs about November. It was a little slow at first, just an egg here or there, but by December, my 20 birds were laying about 6-8 eggs a day. This continued through the winter, despite people telling me they would severely slow down as the days got shorter and the weather colder. Come May, we were in full spring-mode, but I’d lost four chickens. These 16 are laying about 10-12 a day, and I expect that to go up a little since one is broody--meaning she is sitting on the eggs attempting to hatch them--and I just learned that when they are trying to hatch eggs they do not produce any.

Edith, Florence, Eleanor, and Frances are Buff Orphingtons. These golden colored birds are sweet natured and, as Edith is proving, make good mothers. Although my chickens are pets more than food, people do eat Buffs because they are meaty and light skinned. Eggs from these reliable layers are a light brown color, and are often the size of your palm, with double yolks.

 Rosalynn, Patricia, Claudia, Jacqueline, and Mamie are Americana chickens. This is similar to the Arucana breed and, truth be told, I’m not sure what the difference is. This breed can have a variety of feather patterns—Rosalynn and Jacqueline are both reddish with darker tail feathers, while the other four have very interesting gold, black, and red markings. The most remarkable feature of this breed, however, is that which earned them the nickname “Easter Egg Chickens”—they lay naturally colored blue or green eggs!

Hillary and Nancy  are “Assorted Pullets” from Tractor Supply. This could mean they are any combination of breed. Both of these chickens are black with a mottling of brown feathers on their fronts and a sort of iridescent sheen like Daphne Duck on their backs. Very pretty girls! I believe they are laying darker brown eggs, but am not entirely certain who lays what in the nest boxes.