Wildly Devon: My Beginner’s Guide to Backyard-Grown Eggs
After months of staring at my empty, grey, slabbed back garden, no green, no sunshine, no life. The dog was bored, and so was I, then out of the blue, my partner came home with 5 chickens and a poorly constructed coop. Within the first 5 minutes, it was chaos, chickens flapping, tails wagging, hay dust filled our noses, and corn was sprinkled on the ground like confetti at the end of a 5-year-old birthday party. But once the feathers settled, the very odd yet comforting caw and clucks of the chickens began, and a smile rose on my face.
By the end of the week, we had no eggs laid, and ultimately, we thought we had dud chickens. We did our research and found out what they like eating, and so we started giving them most of our scraps (no citrus, uncooked meat), and by the 2nd week, we had our first egg laid. The immense joy I got from finding the first egg, I got my phone and took a picture of my very first egg, and congratulated my girls on doing a good job (although they freaked out when I jumped with excitement).
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My garden is now full of life, my chickens are happy, my dog loves the company and i now spend more time outdoors enjoying my newfound friends, the eggs are flowing I now get 5 or 6 a day and ever since we started feeding them there broken egg shells back, they chickens have laid more eggs and have become a lot more sociable they now wait by the back door for their breakfast (after our tasty egg and toast breakfast, scrambelled for the dog).
The key to happy chickens is a good sturdy coop (now better constructed), keep them warm, cosy, and dry. Give them different types of food, they don't have alot of taste buds, but they enjoy different textures, which helps them retain their instinctive behaviours. Keep a few chickens, they are social animals and like company (yours too). Giving them different types of food, including their eggshells, helps them to produce calicite to form good strong egg shells and cooked meats and plenty of veggies (your leftovers) provide good proteins and nutrients for tasty golden egg yolks. Chickens like routine too, we let them out early in the morning and get them in at sunset, they are already in their coops, ready and waiting when the sun goes down. They like music and converstaion too, if they start getting a bit noisey, put the radio on, they soon quiet down and chill out.
Getting chickens has been by far one of the best decisions my family has made, our food wastage has nearly completely been erased, we now spend no money buying eggs, saving us a good £20 a month, and we are all a little happier.
The key to a happy backyard is filling it with chickens.
