Our laying chickens

The newest layers

Thelma and Louise hoping for a handout

Rita in the nesting box

We have five chickens at the Ashby garden. There are two Barred Rocks and a Rhode Island Red who reached maturity (6 months) and started laying New Year's day. The Barred Rocks are a breed developed in Plymouth Massachussetts. They are cold hardy, defend themselves well, and have engaging personalities. Katy named them Thelma and Louise. Jill named the Rhodie after Rita Hayworth to bring up her self esteem since she seemed a bit shy at first. That's over now--Rita is the first one to fly up and perch on the can when we come to feed her. Her feathers are lovely shades of reddish brown and black.

The babies of the flock are two Black Australorps, a breed developed in Australia from Black Orpington stock. They're a few months younger than the other three. We got these chickens because I had read that they are excellent layers--almost as heavy as Leghorns. They tend to be shy--I don't know if it's the breed, or just these two. The other three boss them around and peck at them, so they stick together. Just today I noticed a small cold egg (it was a cold night) in the back of the coop where they tend to hide out. I made them their own nesting box out of a blue milk crate, so they wouldn't have to fight their big sisters, or lay eggs on the cold ground. We'll see if they use it.

Chickens are fun to keep, and pretty easy if you have a coop that keeps out the predators. They do cost money to feed, but we try to supplement their feed with sprouted grains, old bread, kitchen scraps and collard or cabbage greens. If you hold a collard leaf in your hand, they'll come and break off pieces of it. And, their poop is excellent to add to the compost pile.

Work day photos

Thanks to Bonnie for organizing the Build On day. Several garden members attended, or helped with prep in advance. Here's Nora weeding, "Thelma" the chicken checking us out from atop the greenhouse, and Jill's healthy fava beans.

Build On Work Day

This past Saturday February 5th we had an awesome work day with high school volunteers from Build On organization. We accomplished many things with their help--the blackberry was chopped into submission, the paths got mulched to reduce the weeds, a large bin was cleared and prepared for a new compost pile, the compost pile was started, with layers of material we chopped and added, two new sawhorses were built, the paths got weeded, and the fruit trees received some tlc in the form of finished compost. Here's Laura clearing blackberry roots from the new compost bin.

Here Serena, Asha, and Deveny survey their work on the blackberry.




Here Robby and Alyssa mulch the paths.




Way to go, Build On!