Independence Homestead

Hens Arriving At Their New Home

Unfortunate circumstances have come about that have caused us to find new homes for our chickens. The cost to fight these issues is greater than we have the time and finances for at this time so we reached out to our friends to find new homes for our hens. This ended up being a mixed blessing for us in the end and worked out for the best.

Martha was able to reach out to a co-worker who she had heard kept chickens. We asked if they would be willing to take in our hens since we could no longer keep them. Thankfully they graciously accepted to take them and offered to give us fresh eggs from time-to-time as well. On top of all this it tuns out they are also homesteaders who strive to have an independent lifestyle, much like us!

Friends’ Chickens & Bees

It turned out that our new friends have a well established homestead with many laying chickens as well as meat chickens. In addition to the chickens they have honey bees, ducks, and a wonderful garden, oh and some horses too!

This Memorial Day weekend our new friends were planning on having a few friends over to help harvest their meat chickens and invited us to come learn about the process. We have been wanting to learn more about the process of dispatching chickens and preparing them to eat so this was a perfect opportunity for us. So we packed up our hens in a dog crate and threw our remaining chicken supplies into our jeep and headed out to our friends’ homestead!

Hens Introduction

We introduced our hens into their new home by setting the crate they were in with the door open in the coop of their new home. Our friends have a sectioned off coop with their juvenile chickens which happened to be about the same age as our hens. The birds slowly emerged from the crate to be greeted by their new flock. The rooster in the coop quickly made sure everyone knew who was boss by herding the hens and stepping on the ones who got out of line. After the introduction was over the hens went back into their original groups and sought refuge in the shade during the heat of the day.

Hens Relaxing In The Shade

Check out this video of the hens in their new home.

We look forward visiting our hens in their new home and learning more homesteading skills from our new friends! Check back later to read about how the dispatching of our friends’ chickens went for us first-timers!