Moving chickens to new yards

Okay….I am being a bad wife.  My husband has the day off today and I jump out of bed at 6:45 telling my husband I need to give my white Silkies some more water.

After being outside for 10 minutes, my faithful husband joins me to help take care of the chickens.  So without even a cup of coffee, my sweetie stayed outside for an hour with me cleaning water containers and feeding the chickens and catching chickens to move them into another yard.

Yesterday,  I decided to move my Americauna hens into the Barred Rock yard since I only have 11 Americaunas hens and 10 Barred Rock hens.  The yard is really large so there is plenty of room for the 21 hens.   No roosters so they are my egg layers for right now.  I may get a rooster of each kind later but right now….way too many chickens.

My Americaunas were free ranging in the front part of my yard with their rooster and the Barred Rock were in the back part with their rooster.  My problem was my dogs keep eating the chicken poo when I let them out to run every evening.  Since they are in the front part of my yard, there was poo around for them to eat.  Well, I know that nasty strong fertilizer poo is good for plants but I can’t see how it could be good for dog’s digestive systems.  Hence, the reason to put the hens together and leave my dog’s “free range” (lol) yard free of chicken poo.

So, now I have 10 Barred Rock and 11 Americauna hens in  one large chicken yard.  This will be great because I can let them roam together and free range together.   No more chickens in my yard where I walk around and my dogs roam, too.

Now, my Americuana yard has become my Silkie rooster yard.  I am going to make some individual yards for each color of Silkie with their own chicken house but that will be have to wait until the time and money come together.

Moving my chickens around is probably like women who move their furniture around in their home.  My mom use to do that.  “Let’s try the couch over there and the chair over here.”  Not me, I have my furniture where I want it and it is not moving.  Furniture is heavy, chickens are not.