chickens

I've been thinking about getting chickens for the past year or two, so when i went to the surburban cowboy's house the other night and saw his chickens (and his daughter chasing them around the yard), i decided to make the plunge. I got the info on raising chickens i needed from my brother, then drove to the IFA the next morning and was soon on my way home with six little chicks: two orpington buffs, two silver wyandottes, a plymoth rock, and a black sexlink.

Cait loves chickens. She's a city girl, so besides the pet rats that she brought home from school at the end of the year one time, she's never really been around animals. you'd never know it by looking at the pictures. i don't know who was more scared (or squeeling more), the chickens or cait.

Unfortunately we had one small incident and Hannah got one of them. She's good with the chickens when i'm around, sniffing them and checking them out, but not doing any harm. She was just bidding her time to make her move, however. The other day when i was working in the garden i had brought the growing chicks outside to start to acclimate them to the sun and outdoors. They were in their bin with a wire lid on top. This was the third day i had brought them out, but after an hour or two I heard a crash and ran to the back of the house to find the wire lid on the ground, one chick flapping around outside of the bin, and the others milling around still inside. After a quick headcount i realized one was missing. i grabbed the one escapee and quickly put it back in the bin, then ran inside where i found Hannah settling into her crate with a chicken in her mouth.

RIP little chicken.

As the chicks are growing—and dang they grow fast, they grow bigger from evening to the next morning— i've started to put together their coop. I still need to build the hen house, but i pulled my old dog kennel out and have put them out on warm days to let them start to acclimate. They love it, scratching and pecking and peeping and pooping and flapping around, checking everything out.