A Brand New Barn

We have finally replaced our old chicken coop building with a nice new red barn, and it even has a hay loft up top! Since I’m really focusing my efforts on building a beautiful flock of heritage laying hens, my plan is to divide this barn in half. One half will contain my general flock of layers, which will provide eggs for our own consumption as well as for sale at the farm stand. The other half will contain my breeding stock, which I will continue to improve over time. I’ve got two good sized proper incubators now, so I can have two different hatches happening at once.

My plan for breeds is to specialize in two or three main breeds: Black/Blue Copper Marans, for their gorgeous deep brown eggs; Sapphire Legbar for their lovely blue eggs, and Isbars for their intriguing pale green eggs. With good breeding stock of these breeds, I can create hybrid layers, such as Olive Eggers, which lay darker green to olive coloured eggs.