XP's mixed fresh chicken berries

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Ranked #5,586 in Animals, #127,959 overall

Intro to chicken berry farming:

Chicken berries?

I'm afraid I can't take credit for that one. My former boss called the colorful eggs that one day, and it stuck.

Another co-worker nurtured the idea that "squeezing" the chickens might help us produce more berries.

That's not exactly what gets produced when you squeeze a chicken. Just ask my son.

Chick update!


We just added (8) Isa Brown pullets and (5) frizzle bantam pullets to our flock.

Pics coming soon! :)

Free range 



We only lock up our chickens at night for protection from predators. From morning until dusk, the chickens are free to roam but generally stay within 200 feet of the coop, eating bugs and taking dust baths.

Organic 



Our chickens eat only natural foods, corn meal layer mix and whatever bugs they can catch, as well as vegetable and other kitchen scraps.

Farm fresh 



We collect berries every day, sometimes more than once per day if the weather is extremely cold or hot.

Colorful mix 



We have several breeds of chicken that give us berries that range in color from a very light brown to a medium brown and bright blue to a pale green.

NOTE: It is actually better if we DON'T wash the berries before packaging them, so do not be surprised if there is a bit of bedding, a downy feather or another manner of debris smudged on the shell.

There is a thin protective coating on the egg that keeps out bacteria and keeps the contents fresh!

Meet the ladies! 

Here are the berry makers.

Hens of laying age are called "ladies" at the farm.

Our little hobby farm specializes in dual purpose breeds and other varieties that are rare or fun or just interesting to us at the time.

Come and visit with a few of the ladies producing berries at this time.


Barred Plymouth Rock


Black Australorp


Buff Orpington


Rhode Island Red


Ameraucana (not a purebred, aka Easter Egger)


Ameraucana (not a purebred, aka Easter Egger)

We have several colors of Ameraucana 'type' hens. We also have a pair of White Rock hens that are not pictured above.

New to the flock since this photo shoot, and making pretty darkish brown berries for us are four Cuckoo Maran pullets that we hatched from eggs that were sent through the mail to us. (Video below!)

Finally, we are getting a few little beige berries from a pair of red frizzle bantam hens that followed me home from last summer's 4-H Small Animal Auction.

You know what's coming ... 

It was inevitable ...

Which came first?

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the chicken

LaraineRose says:

I agree with Susan 52.

Posted April 14, 2009

purplelady says:

No, No, everyones got it wrong. First there were bushes. The bushes grew berries. Then there were chickens. They ate the berries. Then the chickens laid the eggs. And then came the Easter bunny!

Posted April 26, 2008

EelKat says:

There had to be a chicken first to lay the egg.

Posted February 03, 2008

Susan52 says:

God created chickens - and then they laid eggs!

Posted January 27, 2008

the egg

EelKat says:

Than again... the chicken had to hatch out of an egg before she could lay an egg.

Posted February 03, 2008

freelief says:

Dinosaurs were laying eggs before chickens existed. So there.

Posted January 25, 2008

 

Our first "homegrown" chicks 

One fine day, this little hen decided she would NOT leave the nesting box. We took her berries and left.



The next day, she decided again she would NOT leave the nesting box. We took her berries and left.

The next day, she once again declared she was NOT ready to abandon her berries. We relented.



Twenty-one days later, she became a first time momma.

chicks: day one 

Hatch day:



Chicks #1 and #2 look on as chick #5 emerges from its egg, still wet and not yet fluffy.

chicks: day six 

Chicks venture outside with momma keeping a close eye on them.

 

week old chicks peek out

Some mixed breed chicks from our backyard flock. This was our first time hatching eggs and we were pretty excited about the whole process.

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chicks: day eleven 

A White Rock hen checks out the wing feathers starting to form on the chicks.

chicks: day twenty-four 

More feathers are coming in, but the fuzzy down isn't quite gone ... this is the gangly teenage look.

chicks: day forty-nine 

Same chick as above, but with full adult feather colors showing. We believe this one to be a pure Rhode Island Red. The other five are crosses.

Again?! 

When the same hen went broody again, we bought hatching eggs online (yes, you can do that) and had them shipped right away.

day old chicks

This will be boring for 99.9976% of you, but we got a real kick out of watching our hen hatch out her eggs after sitting on the nest for 21 days straight. She is a Black Australorp and she was sitting on Cuckoo Maran eggs. Seven hatched in all, five survived.

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a maran in the hand ...

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  • Reply
    LaraineRose LaraineRose Apr 14, 2009 @ 1:56 am
    Years ago we had 6 chickens. They supplied eggs for 2 other families besides our own. They became pets. We couldn't bring ourselves to kill them. One of them lived to be 9 years old. On her 7th year she laid 1 egg and then quit. Every morning until she died she came out of her little hen house, flapped her wings, sang us a little song then went strutting around her domain. She had a lot of other bird friends and our dogs liked her. She was a funny little thing and I sure miss her. 5*s, favorite and fan.
  • Reply
    CleanerLife CleanerLife Sep 17, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
    We had chickens when I was a kid. They were so much fun, and there's certainly nothing like a fresh, home grown chicken egg!
  • Reply
    clouda9 clouda9 Aug 5, 2008 @ 6:09 pm
    We just got 4 chickens (2 cuckoo maran's and 2 black australorp's). Having fun watching them find their way around. Cannot wait for eggs! Great lens.
  • Reply
    XP XP Apr 26, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
    We got some chicks today that are less than a week old, and we are going to try to sneak them under "Crabby" tonight ... wish us luck! With any, she'll think they came out of her eggs, and 'mother' them well.
  • Reply
    XP XP Apr 17, 2008 @ 11:25 am
    One of our Cuckoo Marans has gone "broody" and boy she is a protective one! Will try to get some new pics added soon.
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young "Fluffy"

WHAT IS THE FLUFFY? 

Well, he's a bantam. And he's a he.

Beyond that, it is a bit hard to guess where his genetic road trip took a wrong turn.

When we were "chicken noobs" we thought he was a black silkie.

Then we went to 4-H Fair, and saw what a black silkie was supposed to look like. That was not our Fluffy.

I posted his only-a-mother-could-love face on a chicken group. I asked if he could be blue. That started an interesting debate. In the end, those who believed that he was a partridge and those who believed that he was a blue were about evenly split. No consensus there.

At issue is his being a silkie at all. Some have speculated he may have some frizzle in there somewhere.

Does that make him a sizzle?

Somehow, blue partridge sizzle doesn't have the same warm fuzzy feeling as simply calling him our special Fluffy.

ain't he tweet?

 

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