Ann & Wayne : We love this newsletter! It is so helpful for our "chicken business" as our 6 year old grandson calls it. It is not a business, but provides us and our daughter's family with fresh, organic eggs every day and we love it! We started last year with what we thought was 10 day-old females, but one was a 'roo. We had given her the name Betty, but when she began crowing, he became Mr. B! He does not care for males in particular or if anyone is carrying anything in their hand - he takes it upon himself to attack. So no one goes outside the yard into his free range area without a broom for protection. People have said to make him into chicken soup, but we feel it is God's design to have a rooster. We see him protect his ladies, warn them of danger, call them to special treats and just generally be on guard on their behalf. We live on 40 acres with possible danger to chickies, so we appreciate his efforts! We do not want to kill him just to make it more convenient for us.

We wanted to respond to Renea that was having trouble with her eggs cracking when the hen layed on hard wood because the bedding was pushed out. Ours push their fresh straw out all the time, so we cut squares of thick cardboard and put into each nest box. This softens the fall of the egg and if a mess is ever made from a broken egg, we just toss it out and replace with a fresh piece of cardboard. And, we wanted to respond to Mari, with her chicks all wanting the same nest box. We also had that problem until we went to the craft store and bought wooden eggs. We marked them with a marker to easily identify them when gathering eggs and put one in each nest box. Now the girls look to see if there is an egg in the box and when there is - they go right in and lay theirs. Now all our eggs are divided equally between the nest boxes!