Meet My Newest Family Members

  Photo: Life Dr. ®

Daisy, Ginger and Nellie are only a couple weeks old here in this photo. I adopted them just after they had hatched and have hand fed these baby chicks and spent a lot of time with them on a daily basis.  Today, they are very comfortable around people as well as with my tea-cup yorkie, Winnie. 

I am excited to share that in 2 - 3  months from now they will be egg-laying hens and will each lay an egg per day. The two pictured on the right and rear are Ameraucanas. They are sometimes called the Easter-Egg Chicken because they lay beautiful blue-green colored eggs.  ...perhaps these beautiful hawk-like looking creatures inspired Dr. Seuss for his famous book, Green Eggs and Ham. My Rhode Island Red, Ginger (in the front) will lay brown colored eggs.  All of these breeds originated in America and my Buff-Orpington (not pictured) hails from England and will lay brown eggs as well.

People are intrigued by my decision to raise my own chickens where I live in Los Angeles. I am finding the whole process very empowering as we have to know where our food is coming from in todays world. 

Eggs really got a bad rep in the past, but in fact they are extremely healthy ...nothing beats the egg when it comes to choosing a near perfect protein!  With the right set-up, raising chickens can be incredibly easy!  I will share how I do it on an upcoming video.  Chickens make great pets and are so much fun to watch. Here are some photos of my backyard from a previous post on organic gardening. The smaller retaining wall with the fountains has a flat area on top and behind it.  I just walk right up those stairs and to the left and my chickens come running over to greet me.  They have their own 2-story coup up there and a 12 ' run off the coup that enables them to run around and fly a bit, while protecting them from local predators here in the canyon.

Now that I have my own organic garden and am raising chickens ...perhaps I'll add Urban Farmer to my resume!

If you would like to know more about how easy it is to integrate an ecological garden and backyard chickens into your home environment (no matter what size property you have), click organic garden and chickens to see videos and get these very informative books.

I love being an Urban Farmer!