Raleigh Garden Girl: "The Easy Lay"

Eggs from four of "the girls"

We've wanted to get chickens for several years... long before they were trendy, I promise! I first heard about urban chickens about five years ago from a friend in Raleigh's Historic Oakwood neighborhood. She was setting up her coops. When we moved downtown, we considered them, but we weren't quite ready for them in the yard when we had to uproot and head to the suburbs. When we settled on our 1/2 acre in N. Raleigh, Andy assured me we could have chickens, in time, and we were pleasantly surprised to find out one of our cul-de-sac neighbors already has them!!!

For the last 18 months, I was too busy feeding the "three hungry hippos" to consider having anything else that needed daily feeding and watering - in fact, I even ruled out having a Christmas tree last year saying "I don't need anything else that needs to be fed." But, when my Oakwood friend announced she was moving and needed to rehome her chickens, I couldn't resist.

And so, we've added five new girls to our family and established the "The Easy Lay" Chicken Yard:

Omelet, the Australorp and "boss"

Nugget, the buff orpington (photo by Jody Sorofman)

Silver, the silver-laced wyandotte (photo by Jody Sorofman)

My "funky chicken", Foggy Bottom, the silkie bantam (photo by Jody Sorofman)

We also have, Lovie, the Ameraucana, but I'm lacking a picture of her.

The timing was perfect since as a family we're eating close to 2 dozen eggs a week and buying free range eggs adds up! Besides, since Mason passed away, I've really missed having pets. We actually moved their coops from my friend's and have gotten them all setup in the back yard by the shed. Here's a picture of their digs. Next up is scraping together a "The Easy Lay - Chicken Yard" sign and putting up a 20" high white picket fence to frame their yard.