Chickens
Each spring, we welcome two piglets to the farm. They are usually eight weeks old when they arrive and weigh about forty pounds. The piglets live in our piggery, located behind our vegetable garden, just off our graveled Farm Road. It’s amazing to see how quickly they grow. By the time they leave us in mid-August, they will each weigh about 200 pounds!
Our hens lay, on average, one egg a day and are collected every afternoon by our farmers, then washed and sold in the Dairy Annex. The egg color will depend on the breed of chicken – our flock consists of white and brown, and over the years we’ve even been home to layers of light blue eggs!
Although fed grain daily, chickens love fresh greens, so summer is their favorite time of year. After working in the vegetable gardens, the farm staff frequently treat the chickens to a pile of weeds, and they couldn’t be happier!
Our flock is an educational asset for our school field trip programs, birthday parties, summer camp, and family farm chore programs- everyone loves to help collect the eggs!
We typically have a variety of up to three to four different breeds (with a different breed added each spring!)
RED STAR
Red Stars are rusty red, with white. Added to our flock in 2023, these have been mixed in with the adults and have started producing eggs.
AUSTRALORP
Pronounced Oss-tra-lorp are black with shiny green highlights to their feathers, and they produce brown eggs.
A strong dual purpose breed, chosen for their longevity and health, as well as their gentle disposition and excellent egg-laying abilities.
This beautiful heritage breed can be traced back to the breed known as Orpingtons, originally bred in the village of the same name in Kent, England by William Cook in the 1880s and is listed as “recovering” by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy Conservation.
Introduced to North America in the 1920