I talk about my backyard flock pretty often in my blog posts, but I haven’t ever really laid out what exactly it is that we have on our “Modern Micro Homestead”. I also get asked often how so many of my dishes have so many eggs in them. Well the short answer is – when you raise your own chickens and ducks and you get at least 10 eggs everyday -you can make very egg forward dishes. The longer answer is that our family loves the freedom of knowing where our food comes from, that we are constantly looking for ways to expand our little Homestead.
We raise egg chickens, meat chickens and egg ducks at the moment. We have a mixed flock with Barred Rocks, Speckled Sussex, Amerucana, Blue Sapphire, Silver Laced Wyandotte, Khaki Campbell, along with a variety of other types of birds over the years.
We keep our egg layers and meat-producers separate. Our egg laying chickens live with the ducks, and they get along great. We feed them fermented 6-grain scratch (I will write a post about that soon!), along with kitchen scraps and leftovers. They all come running when they see someone walk out the backdoor with the scrap bucket – eagerly quacking and clucking to get some of the fresh goodies. Occasionally, I will buy the big bag of spinach or kale just for them to enjoy. Even less frequently we will give them mealworms as a real treat.
Meet the Girls:
Almost all of them have names (and they all start with ‘S’, which is a silly story), with the exception of the barred rocks and the speckled sussex. This is because we have 2 sets of 2 barred rocks (one we call the old twins and one we call the young twins) and a set of 2 speckled sussex that we just call both speckled, because honestly you cannot tell them apart. The rest are in groups. We have the ‘Singers’ – Shania, Shakira and Sally. We have the Firestarters (again a story for another day) – Smokey, Sparky and Sizzle. We then have Savvy – which we saved from a round of meat chickens, when we realized that she might not have been meant to be a meat chicken. And at the moment only one of our ducks is named – Sandy. The 3 ducklings we have are not yet old enough to know for sure if they are girls (egg layers) or boys (meat producers), so we won’t name them till we know for sure. But at the moment the names on the table are Spaghetti, Strawberry, Sage, Sasha and Sammy.
Do you or have your raised your own chickens? Do you have any questions you want answers or topics you would like to see me cover in this series?
I love to link up my posts to lots of blogs around the internet – check out this Ultimate Handy Linky Party List to find some of the places I share to!
Estelle Forrest self-published this cookbook after a lot of playing around in the kitchen. You can purchase your own copy here:
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Great to meet your flock! As soon as we can once settled in Tx we hope to have chickens again.
Loved meeting your girls. I adore chickens and eggs and would love to have a coop but our city garden is too small. Plus there’s only 2 of us and I’m the only one who eats eggs! Thanks for linking at Is This Mutton.
Your chickens are beautiful! We are raising chickens again, we had a flock that we had to rehome when we moved! Our new flock has a barred rock and I’m excited, we have never had one before! We are so excited! Hope your flock does well! Would love to see more posts!
Thank you so much! Barred might just be favorite chicken. You are gonna love her!
I enjoyed meeting your chickens Estelle, I bet you have some stories to share. I have a friend who raises chickens and sells eggs, she has some interesting stories that make me laugh.
Indeed we do… they definitely keep life interesting
Estelle, this is a fantastic article. I grew up on a small farm. Cows, horses, AND chickens. I was young but I remember my parents talking about laying chickens and eating chickens.
Visiting today from Happiness Is Homemade #24
I like how you say, almost all of them have names. Same here. I know I’ve named them with the kids but I forget. They remember.
Thanks for sharing with us on the Homestead Blog Hop! Hope to see more this Wednesday.
I love that they all have “s” names! We don’t raise our own but know so many local families and family members that do.
Estelle, “the girls” all look so lovely!!! I have always wanted to raise chickens but Mr. Ethereal is not so keen on the idea… I raised goats in high school so I don’t think it is that big a stretch, lol! 😉 Anyway, I was happy you linked up last week so I could feature the flock this week at SYS #397 for you. <3
Hope your summer is going well and that the featured bunch is staying cool on ice! My best friend's daughter raised rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys and more and she had frozen ice for all her friends to lay on. 🙂
Big hugs from Texas,
Barb 🙂
I want to raise goats so badly! Someday I will have my farm 🚜. Chickens are so fun to raise. I really appreciate your kind words and support. Our chickens are enjoying their own misters (they like to lay under the mist and then fo stretch out in the sunshine).
Fun! I’m glad your girls enjoy their misters. So many good ideas to keep our animals cool. Goats are a lot of fun! Ophelia one day turned her head around while I had her on the milking stand. She took a hunk of my hair, which was sun bleached from swimming, and ripped it off my head and are it. Guess it looked like straw to her, lol! That’s the only weird thing I’d say to watch out for with goats. Otherwise, feeding the kids is fun for the whole family to help with! Milking twice a day is a chore but it helps to rotate who does it. My mom and I shared this job and my dad once I. A while. Happy summer! 🐐🌸
Wow, this reminds me of my motherland and grand ma homestead where we had chickens, rabbits, goats a cat and dogs. we grew our own veg too, thanks for this walk down memory lane and contributing to a cleaner environment.
Fresh is best and especially from your own backyard and homestead. Thank you for sharing your links with us at #271 SSPS Linky. Love your update and all your recipes with the EGGS as its most definitely egg-cellent.