Wood shavings should be good. I use about anything which is dry and has some absorbant qualities, some things arent too absorbant like shredded cane but it works ok. I use deep litter and only change it every other year or so. usually one pen per year maybe. Dont use old eggs or any real eggs, if they manage to break any you will have gg eaters and thats a tuff one to combat sometimes. I keep a golf ball or 2 in each nest box. A 2 gallon fount should be plenty, even a 1 galolon . It will need replenished sooner and that keeps the H2O fresher. Oxine is good to add to the water, it keeps algae/scum/slime growth down, purifies the water and is useful around the yard. Pieces of old carpet work nicely on the bottom of lay boxes, they can be tossed when dirty and the hens wont scratch it out.

This is my first visit to this forum, usually I'm over in the vegetable and fruit forums. But I have had backyard chickens for years, so I loved this rooster tail. ;-) My first 2 backyard chickens were hens purchased from the "free-range" egg farm a couple of towns away. They had been laying for a year and were "worn out" for commercial purposes, but once they molted and settled in, they provided more than enough eggs for me. We had white leghorns on the farm when I was growing up, so I got one production white leghorn (x-large white eggs) and one red something (jumbo brown eggs). Then I started reading up about chickens, and discovered there was a whole world of different birds. When Red keeled over dead the next spring and a lonely Henny Penny started following my 2 cats everywhere, terrorizing them, I went down to the feed store and picked up 2 Easter Egger pullets and, on my vet's advice, 2 bantams (one cochine and one Polish). Both bantams grew up to be roosters! I kept them for a while without any complaints from the neighbors, but I was working nights then, and the constant crowing when I was trying to sleep in the day finally convinced me to give them away. (I thought I had a dozen roosters at one point, but it turned out my neighbor's grandchildren were standing on the other side of the fence, crowing away for HOURS, just for fun. AAAK!) A couple of years later I decided I needed a brown-egger, so I picked up a couple of Black Stars (sex-links). However, I didn't watch the clerk pick out the chicks, and when I got home darned if he hadn't put a barred chick (male) in with a black chick (female). This time a neighbor DID complain--pounding on my door and screaming at me at 4:30 in the morning. Dinner was then and remains the only chicken I have butchered (even growing up my dad did the butchering, although us kids did pluck). This spring my flock was all killed when the meter-reader left my back gate open and 2 vicious dogs got in. My children (then 3 1/2) told me they were very sad that our chickens were gone, then in the next breath told me we needed to get some new chicks. This time I was VERY careful to only get pullets. We started out with 1 americanua, 1 buff Orpington, 1 barred rock, and 1 black star. Unfortunately a racoon got one, and a domesticated cat (not one of mine) got another, so we have "Blacky" and "Buffy" in the back yard, carefully confined to their dog/chicken run. I know there is a rooster in the neighborhood again now, but his owners must keep him in the house until about 6:30 in the morning, because I don't hear him earlier than that. Glad you found homes for all of your spares. I'd still like to try some bantams, but I don't want to deal with roosters again! Catherine

RachelEllen, I know you didn't ask me, and Maria's description is wholly accurate, but there is an easier way to pluck chickens if one is plucking several at a time: Put a steel drum full of water on a brick platform and arrange a torch burner beneath it so the water comes to a rapid boil. Grab a (freshly killed) chicken by the feet with some loooong tongs and dip it in the boiling water for a few seconds, then fire up your plucking machine! There are different configurations for plucking machines, but ours was a motorized horizontal cylinder with soft rubber fingers protrubing from the drum. One holds one's scalded chicken by the feet above the spinning cylinder and it ever-so-gently pulls all the feathers off as it rotates quickly. It's the only really fun part of the process to be honest. More than ten chickens can be plucked this way in the time it takes to hand pluck one. As for slaughtering your own chickens, it can be done quickly and with dignity by just about anyone. Your best bet is to ask someone who has several (get a referral from the place that sells you your chicks) that need dispatching and ask to come help/learn.

Patty, what a great birthday gift. I hope you have a wonderful time. Please post about your trip when you get back. ~Ann