Feeding Chickens

Quick note on the chickens out at the Gorman ranchetttttttte....It's called that because in Texas real ranches start at about 10,000 acres and I only tend to 1 1/2. But the note is this: Whenever we have animals, we try to feed them good food. Our dog Boots eats fresh chicken legs or livers and gizzards daily, along with some veggies and good leftovers. Our cats eat cat food but lots of left over stuff. Our pig used to get two heads of lettuce, two heads of cooked garlic in a pot of fresh rice, two loaves of bread, and 8-10 veggies daily, along with oranges, bananas, corn. Now our 8 chickens and two ducks (one male and one female), eat good organic chicken food from the feed store--that's always available to them--but then daily we serve them some oat-bread, some sunflower seeds, raw, some lettuce or spinach, ends of veggies and fruit I've cooked with. Today, for instance, they've got one slice of two-day-old pizza, half a pot of jasmine rice with garlic, a bag of fresh spinach, and three ears of freshly cooked corn with just a touch of salt. There will be more by the time I feed them at 5 PM.

I figure if I cook for myself daily then I should cook for my kids and grandkids and friends daily--even if they don't come over--and the same should go with the animals. And the results are pretty good. We're getting 7-12 chicken eggs and 1-2 duck eggs daily from 8 chickens and one duck. I've never seen or heard of this kind of production.

They also get to run around outside of the large coop a few times a week for an hour or two, looking for bugs, protected from the red-tailed hawks by my daughter Madeleina's two dogs, along with Boots.

And man! Those eggs are good! I mean, to die for!