<p align="center"><em>A guest blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara</em></p>
Around the Miller Farm feeding the chickens is a multi-step process.

First, I go to the feed store and buy 50-pound sacks of lay pellets.

Then I bring the sacks home and move them into 5-gallon buckets. This prevents non-chickens (i.e. rats) from getting into the food in the shed.  Most of the buckets have lids that snap on and are difficult to remove.  Beekeeper Brian was kind enough to purchase special screw-top lids to make life easier for me.

I fill two screw top buckets with feed and the rest goes into regular buckets. I move the feed from bucket to bucket as needed. It is all quite efficient when I am paying attention.

Monday I was not paying attention.  I went out to move feed from a regular bucket to an empty screw top bucket.

The regular bucket was empty.

In fact, all the buckets were empty. The poor chickens had no food.  Their feeder was empty.

<a href="http://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/empty-bucket2.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3883" alt="empty bucket2" src="http://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/empty-bucket2.png?w=253" width="253" height="300" /></a>It was a chicken feed famine on Miller Farm.

So I closed up the shed and headed to the feed store.  I went up to the counter and asked for two sacks of lay pellets.

The woman behind the counter informed me they were out of lay pellets. She said they’d run out about an hour ago before I arrived.

I was speechless.

She asked if I had enough to make it until their delivery arrived on Tuesday. I was embarrassed to admit we had no lay pellets at all.

She offered to sell me a 10-pound sack to get me through. Since I knew Tuesday would be a busy day, I bought a second 10-pound sacks to last until Wednesday when I could make another trip to the feed store and purchased a 50-pound bag.

On Wednesday, when I returned from the feed store, the chickens obviously recognized the larger sack and anxiously waited the arrival of feed in their feeder. I scattered some around the yard and filled the feeder.
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/50-pound-bucket.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-3884 aligncenter" alt="50-pound bucket" src="http://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/50-pound-bucket.png?w=300" width="300" height="168" /></a></p>
The remainder I put into the appropriate buckets thus ending the famine on Miller Farm.

Last week I learned that 30 chickens are not the same as 46 chickens. This week I learned that 10-pounds of feed does not go as far as 50 pounds.

<a href="http://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/ten-pound-and-bucket2.png"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3885" alt="ten pound and bucket2" src="http://judythewriter.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/ten-pound-and-bucket2.png?w=300" width="300" height="295" /></a>Even the chickens recognized the larger feed bag.

Math is a very useful subject.