Chickens

One day old and very cute!
10 days old and still very cute!
About 2 weeks old and trying to escape!
Ugly, ugly chicks!
The beginning of the barn!
David hard at work...
...and so am I!
I am good at this you know!
Of course Trina is helping!

Our new kitty is fascinated by the big birdies who are not afraid of him!
Finished! The chickens moved in and David is putting the finishing touches on the fencing!
Beautiful!




Like our life wouldn't be busy enough we also have chickens now. We got this dream of waking up in the morning, the sun shining in our faces and after some stretching and yawning stroll out to the chicken house to get some still warm fresh brown eggs. Now here is the reality. David was researching for weeks which chickens were right for the area, most resistant to diseases, also good for meat, best laying......and so on. I also ordered him the "Chicken for Dummies" book. He was all excited about having his own chickens.
So we ordered 14 hens and a rooster for good measures. Of course the neighbor had second thoughts about us messing with the value of the neighborhood us starting to bring in "livestock"! We assured him that we would fence in the chicken run so they would not stray onto his property. So in April our chicks arrived just before Easter and it was real cute to have real live Easter chicks. We had them in our enclosed sun room since it was still to cold outside for itsy bitsy chicks. Well they started growing and turned into those ugly adolescent chicks who looked like they had some disease, half feathers, half down and some bare skin, ugly, ugly. The also grew out their tub and it smelled pretty darn farmish in our sun room.
Then came building a chicken barn which took David with a bit help from me about 2 weeks hard, hard labor and about $2000. Then the fencing took another few days and those dang things kept on growing.
Well their housing is done, they moved in and David knows them all by name. He is totally be smitten by his girls (and one boy) and he doesn't mind to clean their water, food, bedding and still wait till about August till they will start laying eggs. I tell you, they better be laying LOTS of eggs to make up for all the headaches and cleaning the sun room, and putting up the chicken coop and for the 2 grands we spent on them. They have to lay 12000 eggs ($2.00/dozen) to pay for their home. They better be busy little birds!!!!