chicken talk, was: eggs?

[Guest guest]

Our chickens have been amazing me. This is the first time we've had

chickens so I pretty much went into this with expectations from the books.

For example, I read that chickens will overwork the ground closest to their

coop, yet our chickens come out in the morning and take off, hiking all over

the place together, eating whatever bugs and greenery they find. Every

night as a group they march back into the coop and we close it up. The

commercial feed is in a sheltered area about 20 feet away from the coop, so

I know they aren't just eating their fill of it before coming out.

Once the weather warmed up and some of the snow melted away, the amount of

feed they were eating dropped a LOT, and their desire for crushed egg shells

went up. I wish now that we'd been measuring out the food, just to answer

the question of " how much less feed are they eating? " Today I watched them

traveling around together eating worms that had come up because of the rain.

And my daughter hand fed them plants again today. It's a small leafed

plant, tiny white flowers when it blooms, and the chickens just love it. I

think my daughter tires of feeding them before they tire of having her pick

it and hand it to them. : )

I so enjoy having the chickens free to move about and get their food where

they find it that I really don't want to pen them up. But come warm

weather, our two boy cats who love hunting and eating mice will not stand

for staying in the house. Currently they only get to go out after the

chickens are in for the night.

I can't imagine that any amount of pen moving is going to equal the

wonderful diet they are getting by being free to move around. Can cats and

chickens co-exist? Surely cats wouldn't have been tolerated on farms if

they attacked the chickens, yet that's sure what our cats look like they

want to do. Anyone have experience with this?

Thank you,

Rhea