We always had a farm, sheep, chickens, cats, dogs,steers, donkeys, horses, the whole thing, but we always kept our animals in their own respective stalls, and the chickens were in a chicken house with the laying boxes. I do not believe in range chickens when you have neighbors they could bother. (I know for sure now, I would never do that.)
The problem is, the neighbor built a chicken house much too small for the number of chickens he started with. The other neighbors dogs killed five or six of the first flock and he replaced them, plus a storm came and blew the chicken house on its side and the chickens had no place to go but our barn for shelter, plus my arborvitae to roost at night. It took him two weeks to get around to putting it back up and the chickens had, by that time settled in on our farm. He then realized there were over a dozen eggs in his wheelbarrow and he left them there, God knows why, and the hen hatched them. Another dozen chicks that out of those there are now 7 left...fox has eaten well and cleaned up the weaker of the flock. So, these suckers survived snow, rain, wind, ice and all that below zero temps....I am doomed unless we remove them ourselves which is what we are going to have to do. May deck I use constantly has chicken poop all over it and I need to wash it off daily. In the winter that is a problem. I love animals and birds but there is a place for all of them. They are nice chickens, but have completely ruined all the flower beds and when we had to sew grass seed, we had to lay wire on it until it was big enough. I ihad some old bulbs little blue bells we called them, but there is another name for them. They are now gone. Crocus, same thing. They have been just another annoyance in addition to the weather problems we had this year. Sorry to ramble on, just venting.
Have a good day.
