February 19th, 2010:

Far be it from me to make the claim that Aunt Toby and the DH are experts at raising chickens or hatching chickens with a broody hen. Chickens, as I have noted before, are the ‘gateway drug’ of livestock raising: as long as you can keep them save, fed and watered, you are good to go. You don’t really need to be an expert first to raise them. In all the years we raised chickens in a henhouse, we only had one hen go broody, and she was part of a ‘matched pair’ of Old English that a co-worker of the DH’s gave to us. Most chickens have had broodiness selected out of them because a broody hen does not lay eggs, (more…)