What's up 4 Non Blondes?

This morning we picked up four of the new additions to this years flock. Say hello to - Ariel, Josie, Wendy and Ginger. Collectively we're calling them the 4 Non Blondes.

After losing the Spice Girls, our Barred Rock hens, last fall to a weasel we've been planning for our new flock all winter. Instead of sticking with just one breed, we're branching out to a variety of hens. The 4 Non Blondes are red babcock or hyline hens, bred for egg production. These ladies come to us at about 17ish weeks old which means we should be getting eggs within the next month.

In April we'll be getting 15 chicks - a mixture of barred rocks, cuckoo marans, and speckled Sussex. In the meantime Marc is busy designing, planning and building our new chicken coop which we will locate over by our garden instead of next to the wood pile on the driveway. I'm fantasizing about chicken tunnels and how to get the hens to do the weeding and fertilizing in the garden for me. Anyone who has visited in the summer knows the weeds are out of control in our garden and we need all the help we can get!