Hens added to the flock

After our house meeting last week we mucked out the coop to get it ready for some new birds.  Maggie knows a lady outside of town with roosters and hens who agreed to sell us a few full grown layers when she heard about our recent tragedy with the pitbull.  After cleaning out the coop and installing some perches made out of down limbs from the yard, a few of us went chicken shopping.

These two chickens are mixes of different breeds; on the left mainly Araucana, on the right Wyandotte.  The breeder had a small operation and kept all her birds together creating eclectic mixes of colors and patterns.  Before we had 4 Rhode Island Reds that were pretty much indistinguishable, which left us with no answer to the common question, “What’s this one’s name?”  We made a point to pick out very different looking birds and have since begun the process of observing their behavior and choosing appropriate names.

We also got around the hanging up the feed dispenser, which seems to greatly reduce waste.  More about the chickens to come.  To see more photos check out my flickr stream starting here.