Chickens!

We have started our chicken project. We started by buying the local breed of chickens from neighbors and local friends. I actually had to carry chickens about 2 miles to get them to our home. That was across multiple fields, crossing fences and traversing through the mud. But so worth it to be home with our chickens!

 

The local breed of chickens lay eggs that are bright orange and have great flavor. And their meat is more tasty than the broilers that some people raise. Also, they are supposed to be easier to raise.  It's really fun and rewarding to watch the chickens grow and raise your own food! If you have a back yard this would be a great project to have with your kids!

It is a bit surprising how much I/we Americans don't know about chickens despite all of the chicken and eggs we eat. I was researching about them before I came here and was asking my coworkers some questions. I asked my them how often can a chicken lay an egg and the response I received was- "how long is a chicken pregnant?" which was followed by "do you need a rooster to make that happen?". Ha! But I too had little knowledge of chickens and am constantly being laughed at and corrected on how to take care of them. I nearly poisoned them on the first day. I was told to go get weeds from the shamba/garden. I figured the chickens wouldn't eat something if was poisonous, but apparently chickens are always that smart and thankfully someone was watching me and pulled out the bad weeds.

These are the laying boxes where the hens lay their eggs.

The big black one is one of our roosters, or as they call it here, the cock. The locals love to say how we have such a big cock- lol! The chicken sitting up on the bar is where the chickens sleep. They all line up on the bars and sleep up there.

As far as the questions about how many eggs a chicken can lay, if they are fed properly (which is another lesson) they can lay about 6 eggs a week. If there is a rooster in the area with them it will most likely be fertile but you don't have to have a rooster to have eggs. Fertile eggs can be eaten or you can keep them for hatching.  Not all hens like to sit on their eggs for hatching. So you find the one that is brooding (wanting to sit on eggs) which can apparently be determined by the way they cluck and you can put up to 12-14 eggs under that chicken. The eggs can be from other chickens they don't have to be from the brooding chicken. Then that hen sits on the eggs for 21 days. After 21 days they hatch. We have one hen sitting on 12 eggs that are scheduled to hatch on Friday. I'll keep you posted on the progress.