Intro to chicken berry farming:
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!
They wrote the book on it ...
Meet the ladies!
Here are the berry makers.
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.
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Hobby farming for fun and healthy living
You know what's coming ...
It was inevitable ...
Which came first?
Fetching blurbs now... please stand bythe chicken
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
Egg toys!!
Our first "homegrown" chicks

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

Chicks #1 and #2 look on as chick #5 emerges from its egg, still wet and not yet fluffy.
chicks: day six
Cute chicken toys!
chicks: day eleven
chicks: day twenty-four
Wow, more chicken stuff.
chicks: day forty-nine
Again?!
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.





Runtime: 407
1369 views
6 Comments:
curated content from YouTube

a maran in the hand ...
How do you like this lens?
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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?
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?
Here, chick, chick!
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