The Wild Chicken Chronicles of Our Homestead The Serene Forest

It has been a wild ride for backyard chickens here in The Serene Forest. For starters, we got flooded during Hurricane Ian. Our chickens at the time had to be re-located to the backyard since their coup and run was flooded. We eventually re-homed those chickens since we could not care for them during that time.

After the aftermath of that storm, we were ready for more chickens. Someone across town was looking to rehome some Bantams. A type of chicken we had never had before. I believe the Bantams we have now are Black Breasted Red Old English Bantams. But I could be wrong.

This was the first time we had ever had a rooster. They were young. Maybe 6 months old. These bantams could fly really well and enjoyed being in the rafters of the new coup we built for them. When allowed to free range, they liked to travel. Often times, they would be in our neighbors yards or up in trees nearby.

After a few months, we added Red Sex Links to the flock. We bought these mature hens from a friend from church. While our bantams had been infrequent layers, these new hens laid right off the rip. This seemed like a great investment. If you want to see our video on adding new hens to our flock CLICK HERE

A short while after, we had some predator problems. Some of our hens weren't showing up at night. We expected some of them to be broody with nests we didn't know about. Eventually, we suspected they had been targeted by hawks. But, that may have not been the case as racoons made themselves very present around the same time.

At some point, a bobcat attacked the flock while my wife was home. She was able to chase off the bobcat, but the hen died a few days later.

We were beginning to wonder when this craziness would die down. But it was really only the beginning. We had lost at least 4 chickens by this point. But then all the sudden we had more...

One morning I woke up to work in the foodscape and heard chirping in our coup. Four baby chicks had hatched out of the nest a broody hen had been sitting on. They all looked in perfect health. This was amazing as we suspected we had lost 4 chickens before this. Now, we were raising 4 chicks. Mama hen has been doing well raising her little ones.

There were three eggs in the nest that hadn't hatched. I suspected that since mama hen wasn't sitting on them anymore, they were probably lost and would never hatch. I decided to remove them before they became rotten or bad. I put them where I normally put any organic trash. In a compost bin. This seemed like a good idea until a few days later another chick had hatched! In our compost bin.

Although we did our best to try and help this new chick survive long enough to be introduced to the flock, it did not survive the first night. We were ill prepared. Ill equipped. And had very little knowledge about what to do. But this was a great learning experience.

Check out the video below to see a better detailed story of what the past few months have been like here... in the.... Serene Forest.

See you........................................

P.s. you can also check out our Homesteading thread on our Gardening Forum by CLICKING HERE