Chickens Coming Home to Roost - In Our Backyard

 From left, Elly and Mrs. Mendelbrite.

Chicks with personality

Backyard chickens - we have eight of them, each with her own personality. They're named after some of the female characters from the Andy Griffith show - Helen Crump and Thelma Lou (Black Stars), Elly and Juanita (Golden Laced Wyandottes), Mrs. Mendelbrite (Plymouth Barred Rock), Aunt Bea and Clara Edwards (Rhode Island Reds) and Hilda Mae (Black Australorp). Though they've only been in our backyard for a little over a year, it has been great fun.

Why we decided to keep chickens

We decided to get chickens for several reasons:
 1). After considering having chickens for the steady supply of high quality, organic eggs, I called to find out about city ordinances concerning backyard poultry. To my delight I was told there were none. And with no one living on either side of us and the house behind us empty and for sale, we knew there would be no objections from the neighbors.

2). But the catalyst for actually getting chickens came when our fenced garden area became overgrown with field bindweed. Not wanting to use chemical weed killers, we abandoned the area and turned our backyard lawn into vegetable garden instead. Field bindweed is nigh to impossible to get rid of, but we knew that chickens would take care of the problem and give us eggs and fertilizer to boot.

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