Brown Eggs

Each Spring in March, we purchase from one to three dozen baby chicks.  We pick a variety of breeds, including Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, ISA Browns and Americana's.  We nurture our chicks in a protected area in the barn starting in a large box with heat lamp and with plenty of food and water.  After about one month, we move them outside to a chicken wire enclosed protective pen where they can run around, eat weeds, grass and bugs.  After about a month in that pen, the weather is starting to warm up and we move them to a larger pen.  This pen is also fully enclosed protecting them from all predators, but giving them enough room to 'spread their wings.'  They are only about half adult size at this time.  We won't move them in with the current adult layers until July, when they are big enough to fend for themselves.

Once our Spring chicks join the rest of the flock, they live in a nice, cozy, protected coop.  Each day, we let all our chickens out to roam in a large enclosed pasture where they relish the time scratching for bugs, eating grass and weeds, and generally acting as free range chickens.  You can see how excited they are to get outside as they burst through their coop door in the morning.  At dusk, they dutifully head back to their coop when they go to roost.  We close their coop door at night to keep them safe from nocturnal predators.

Our chickens eat well.  Not only do they have an unlimited supply of high grade layer mix, but they get their pasture diet in clement weather and all the fruit and vegetable scraps we can collect throughout the year.  This diet and exercise make for the best tasting eggs collected, washed and packaged daily.