Life of a chicken on our farm

Day old chicks


First day in the chicken tractor, so much space (4 weeks old)


Tractor filled with chickens, gravity fed waterer


growing chickens in the chicken tractor


they sure are getting big


7 weeks old

Our chickens will be eight weeks old this Monday. They quickly outgrew the chick hotel and have been living it up in their chicken tractor. The chicken tractor is simply a movable pen which allows the chickens room to graze, flap their wings, run around, stretch out, bask in the sun, rest in the shade and just chill out. We move it once a day to ensure fresh grass. At first they were not big fans of the grass but now that they are used to it they can't get enough of it. When we move the pen at night they just love to get to the new grass. They also love to get any greens from the garden that we give them. We have been feeding them greens that are too big or that have bolted from the heat. Favorites so far include summer turnip greens, mizuna and chinese cabbage. If we ever have left overs from the market the chickens get to munch on them. This is our second year raising pastured chickens. Last year we had a heritage cross breed which we got from a farm who raises heritage breeds and they were very entertaining. They had all kinds of energy and they would run around chasing each other all day. We loved watching them. They were slow growing and were smaller than we hoped in the end so we are trying a more traditional breed this year. So far they are growing very quickly. They do not have the same energy level as the chickens of last year but they are still entertaining to watch. We anticipate they will be ready for selling in another few weeks.