our chickens eat horse feed and show calf feed almost exclusivly 

I do occasionally throw in a few handfuls of calf manna to them,  they love it. They also hang around my horses feed bucket when it's feeding time, they pick up anything he drops. And he does have to fight them off his alfalfa. They are relentless!

Your Chickens are so pretty and healthy looking, they can be lots of fun to have around.. but can be a pest too, lol, I love my chickens most of the time, I dont like them hanging around my horses to much, I dont like them trying to get into the feed tubs while my horses are eating that has cause a few problems..I was having to check the feed tubs befor I fed because the hens would lay their eggs in there and poop to, Now I dont have that problem thank goodness I did not like them pooping in the feed tubs. I have about 8 laying hens and have not bought store bought eggs in about 10 years now. I'm always giving eggs away to friends or my husband customers.. About every other year I'll get some chicks to raise to replace the older hens..

You are doing a good job Chicken lady..

I hate chicken poop!!! I have to cover my hay with a tarp or else they will set all say and just poop on it.. once they all get a little bigger they will all be in the large back pen we built and they won't have access to the hay area. I have a few that jump the fence occasionally but I'm hoping they will mostly stay in the back area... its really big and has lots of trees and room to run around .. and lots of sand pits for dust baths. Right now, they are just kinda all over the place because I'm too soft and don't like the pecking order stuff lol!. Chickens are vicious! 

yep, the poop really sucks, I finally got all my hens to stay around the house, I think the coyotes had a hand in this too, the ones that liked staying around the horse pens got picked off by the coyotes and the younger hens got the hint that the house is safer then trying to eat my horses feed. but every once in a while I'll find a egg and poop in one of the feed tubs.. The hens really like my hay bales too and that really got to be a freaking pain, but now since they stay up by the house its all good now. BUTTTTT they like pooping by the back door, WHYYYYYY oh WHYYYYY do they have to poop there, lol..

I have never had chickens before, but maybe this year!  I'm so afraid they will die!

You'd be surprised they are actually pretty good at taking care of themselves once they get past the chick stage. We provide safety with fences and coops that get locked up at night and just make sure nothing can dig under. My biggest threat to my chickens seemed to be neighbors loose dogs or stray dogs. We are still in the process of building more fence since our neighbors won't do anything to keep their dogs off our property... even after I asked nicely after the first attack and then not so nicely after the next one. My dogs will bark like crazy if they see those dogs so I just run out and yell, throw rocks, or use a BB gun to scare them off. My chickens know to run back to the barn when my dogs begin to bark.. 

Would you believe someone actually "dumped" a red rooster and three hens on the road in front of our house.  I tried and tried to catch them but the coyotes were way more successful than I was.

That's a really nice set up it seems you have!  I love the "Farm fresh" stamp and those grey hens are pretty!  I have a love/hate relationship with chickens...love the eggs but those birds poop more than any animal!  I don't keep many around but I do like to try new breeds when I can.  My favorite is by far the Hy-Line Browns.  Those are some egg laying fools and so docile.  

Way back when there was a show on television called Here's Hollywood where they spoke to actors in their home setting.  Henry Fonda had a coop of chickens for one reason only and that was to fertilize his garden with their droppings.  He said that was the best fertilizer in the world.  Funny how you remember dumb stuff like that.

We used lots of chicken poop in our garden last year and it was great... until the chickens discovered the actual garden. They ate almost every single cucumber and zucchini I had and my tomatoes.  That was the first year they had ever bothered our garden. We moved the garden far away for this year's attempt. Plus we put up more fencing to keep them away from certain areas.  They use to just scratch around in the garden and not mess with the vegetables. Now they have a taste for fresh veggies lol! I planted a few herbs for them to help themselves to near their coops... lavendar, thyme and they love the lemongrass. Oh, they bout wiped out my husband's chili tepin bush and they picked off all my jalapeños and Serrano plants. 

Wow, I am jealous!! We have 11 of them running around, and got 3 eggs this week. The first eggs since august!
Now we only got 8 of them (light Sussex) (actually 10, but 2 died...) last November, and they where pullets so we knew it would take a bit off time for them to start laying. 
The other 3 are Australorps and they are not the strongest.... we've had Rhose Island reds for years, the last one passed away early last year and she was at least 10 yo... so 2 years ago we got 8 of the Australorps but, they don't lay when it's hot (welcome to Tx...), they don't lay when it's cold... they don't lay when it's windy (again welcome to Tx...) and for some reason they just up and die.... so we are down to 3 of those, and when we brought the new group they stopped laying eggs all together.....

I do hope the new girls start giving us eggs soon! No fun when you have them running around and still have to buy eggs.... they don't taste half as good as fresh freerange eggs!

My black Australorps have been pretty hearty ... they are still laying despite this crummy weather we've been having. They are some of my favorites. Very friendly and docile. I bought some blue australorps too. I bought a little australorp cockerel last order to keep them coming. I know for sure what breed I will not get again and those are silkies! So cute when they are chicks, but man, when they get older they are kinda ugly lol! And mean ... I ended up with 4 stinkin roosters. I have 1 left that we haven't culled because he pretty much stays to himself and doesn't cause any problems. Truth is, I have more roosters than I need but as long as they stay nice and don't act a fool, they can stay. They offer good protection for the hens.  I've got 4 really pretty Black laced red wyndotte roosters that are still very young so I'm trying to decide what to do with them still. I've got 1 neat looking brahma/ easter egger cross rooster too, I hatched him out in my incubator with 3 other pullets. They are really cool looking birds that will lay either green, pink or blue eggs. I've some some marans coming and im super excited to get those dark chocolate eggs! 

That sounds so cool! You really have a good thing going there!

We don't have a rooster, just the girls. They are pretty docile, but not veyr tame. Although they do come running whne I go out to feed. Maybe we should get a couple more, or even a rooster, but we'd need a larger area for them then and we really don't have room for that.

I do love the look of silkies when they are younger. Didn't realize they don't stay cute.

We had a guinea for a while that my friend gave us. She had 2 but 1 got killed by her dog, so she felt bad for it to be all by herself.... OMG! They are LOUD!! She would screech at anything moving! Leaves, trees, dogs, horses, blades of grass..... lol.... and it sounded like a rusted windmill!! Horrible! It wouldn't have been so bad if she stayed in the pen, but she started to escape and run around the yard..... and screech right underneath the bedroom window from sunup!!! Many times I had to stop my husband from wringing her neck.... lol.... 

Unfortunately she not only escaped the pen, but she would roam the neighbors yards also. And 1 of the neighbor's dogs got her. So that was the end of our guinea adventure.....

i love my yard birds we had dommicker and game hens loved the eggs  but then we did not have a barn or much and the roosted in trees

those are greaat  those pecan trees in the back ground

There's pecan trees all around the property... we love them! So they attract the crows and we discovered the crows keep the hawks away from our chickens. I think over the last 5 years, I've lost 2 chickens to a hawk attack. The crows started increasing and the hawks stay away. The crows don't bother the chickens at all. They are a welcome ally here! That entire pasture use to be pecan trees, I'd say about half of them died because of a crop dusting plane was spraying on a very windy day... also killed some of my new red oaks that we had planted. We are surrounded by crop fields on all sides 

I went thru the guinea phase too... talk about adorable babies!!! They were so cute,  I picked up 6 lavendar guineas from my feed store.... little did I know what kind of lunatics they'd turn out to be! Holy cow.. and LOUD . They were so annoying.. I gave them away

I'm addicted to hatching them out, then complaining that I have too many chickens, lol.   I love my frizzles though!

That's one I've not had yet, frizzles. I haven't seen any locally. I had a few polish when tsc had a straight run bin.. I ended up with a cockerel and a pullet. Sadly they didn't make it.. but I had heard they are kinda fragile birds. I've got 6 cochins that I really like.. 5 white and 1 partridge. The 5 white females are in with my lavendar rooster so I'm putting a few of those eggs in my bator too ... wonder what I'll get???!! A purple cochin? Or a white orpington?? Lol!