New Hens For Our Fully Automatic Chicken Coop!

Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video and making these stories possible. If you’d like to open your own online shop or create a website, go to https://www.squarespace.com/wildweroam for 10% off your first purchase. This week we get a new batch of hens for our mobile chicken coop, and set things up for the summer! It was a weird feeling living with an empty coop these past few months, but we've been patiently waiting to see if we could find exactly the right type of hens for our setup. When we first started our adventures into raising hens, we had a barnyard mix of heritage breeds that were incredibly resilient and very intelligent (though not the most productive of layers). Bit by bit, that group got eaten by various predators, and eventually we got a more commercial breed of brown egg layers (novogens) that were incredibly productive and profoundly unintelligent. Without a good system for getting through the winter (fencing/water) we decided to process that group in the early winter before the coyotes got them. Now, this year, our goal is to go back to the heritage breeds while creating our very own mix of species by raising some new chicks to mix into this group. And, we'd like to figure out a fencing system for heavy snow that is predator proof, as well as a watering system that won't freeze but doesn't require electricity since we are off grid and have a limited supply, especially in winter. Send us your winter tips if you've got them! hugs, Dana & Lou