excellent! It is excellent for growing weed under cover. The grass and weeds grow so well that they are more than triple the size of weeds on the lawn. So I have proved that using white tarp is a big mistake to smother weed, however, it might help when it comes to grow veggies.
I have to buy some black plastic sheeting (3mil) from Home Depot and will apply them soon. Hopefully this time the sheeting will kill the weed. Well, as least the chickens love the grass and weeds.

Yes, we use WHITE tarp. Don’t think it is better than black plastic. When you live in the country you try to use whatever is on hand rather than going out and buy something new. I have no idea if it is going to kill the weed and smother the grass. As you can see from the photos, Tiffany and Odelia helped me to move the bricks and laid down the tarp. Yes, the girls moved the BRICKS! I used to think, “If only I have 1 son…..” Who said girls can’t do dirty work? Thank the Lord I have my daughters helping me. Always remember to involve your kids in the work, they enjoy hardwork, if you show them the right attitude.

We found some small eggs laying on the floor a couple of days ago and we know that the new hens are starting to give back. Although the eggs are small, we are still excited. We still have to wait until they learn to lay in the nest box so that I don’t have to hunt for the eggs on the floor.
On a side note, one of the old Bar Rock hen is sick. I don’t know what to do. It walks slowly, doesn’t “hang out” with the other hens, doesn’t eat or drink much. I know I should quarantine it but I don’t have another coop to confine it. I am hoping it will recover by itself.

It is 6 weeks before last frost so time to start the seedlings. All the girls choose their favorites and plant them in the pots. New to us this year is watermelon, corn and some Chinese veggies.

I took away the cage and let the younger hens to start “living” with the older hens. Right away the pecking problem starts. However, since the snow melts the hens have more access to the yard and more space to roam, it is not too bad. I can see they are splited into 2 groups – old and young. And whenever an old hen walks close to a younger hen, the younger one would avoid come into close contact. This does put more stress on the younger hens and I don’t know if they are going to lay eggs well.
I now turn off the light in the coop during the day and this helps the pecking somewhat because if the chick can’t see too well in the dark, it wouldn’t peck at each other too much. However, this will decrease the egg production rate because a hen normally needs 12-14 hours of light to lay consistently. Oh well, there is always give and take. But I thank the Lord that my family can have this opportunity to raise food ourselves.
I don’t give money to my kids in offering at church. I ask them to do extra work (chores don’t count because we think it is everyone’s responsibility) to get paid. For example, whoever goes out with daddy and brings water and collects the eggs get $0.10. When summer comes there will be lots of projects that I would enlist their help. I teach them to tithe their little amount of money. You see, I don’t think we should just give them “pocket money” to spend. They should earn money themselves so that they know the value of money, be thankful to God, and have a positive attitude towards hardwork. There is a sense of satsifaction after a day’s hard work.

We got them last Wednesday. I have read that we should not mix hens with different ages because this would lead to pecking order and cannibalism. True enough, that is what happened. As soon as I put the younger birds in the coop, the older birds start pecking on them. And I have noticed that there is 1 hen that is particularly aggressive. She pecked the feather off from the new birds again and again. The new birds were so scared that they “hide” in the corner.
Since I have somewhat expected this to happen , I decided to put the 5 new birds in a cage inside the coop. I hope this would give some time both group to recognize each other. The new birds are debeaked, so they cannot defend themselves. I tried to debeak one of the aggressive birds but I don’t think I can do that unless I have the right tool – a hot blade to melt away the beak.
I read that on a pasture free range setting the feather pecking is minimized. Since I can only provide them a “yarding” setting, I might have to kill that old hen to save the 5, but I will wait for another week and try to mix them again. It is interesting to note that not all old hens are aggressive, so hens do have different “personalities”.

We have on average 7 eggs a day, down from 9.  I suspect the reason being the hens are out of water for extended period of time during the day.  It is too expensive to turn on the heater in the coop to keep the waterer from frozen.  May be I can look into having a heat mat or something where the waterer can be placed on top of.  We will need to purchase some ready to lay pullet this year to keep up with the demand.  If we have 3 families who constantly require eggs each week, we would need to have at least 15 hens.

Thanks to our homeschooling friends and a co-worker at work, we have 3 customers so far. All the hard work in breaking ice for the waterer, feeding, changing bedding finally pays off. May be we should add more hens to keep up the demand.
We also heard that someone enjoy reading “Nourishing Traditions”. We have contacted the publisher and will start selling this book on this site soon.

Here are 2 videos for our hens in their coop.

Video1

Video2