Here Chicky, Chicky, Chicky

It's June 1st and I'm starting the month off strong! :) I have been so crazy busy that blogging has just fallen to the wayside and been bumped from the priority list.  However,  so many fun things are going on in my life, I hate not to share them - so here we go!

On May 11th, I became chicken mama to 6 sweet five week old chickens.  I've never had chickens before, and never really been around chickens before - but I really wanted to try it out, enjoy the fresh eggs and embrace the reality that I live in the country and well, why not have chickens?

Here they are in their first photo shoot: Don't you just LOVE their names?  Well I do!  Gracie Lou wasn't really inspired by anything, but could've been influenced by Miss Congeniality's Gracie Lou Freebush.  Shelby Lynn - from Steel Magnolias, Holly Hobbie because that was the theme of my bedroom as a young child (even though my husband and mother in law keep calling her Hobby Lobby) , Peppermint Patty from Charlie Brown and it's oh so fitting for this sassy girl, Darla Jean from the Little Rascals and Emma Rae is from Something to Talk About and I just love that name.

In the few short weeks that we have had them, they have grown SO much, are feathering out and just getting fat!  They love, love, love mealworms and when they hear the bag shaking they come running!  This is their coop that my loving RC built for them, as well as my garden that I am hoping will continue to grow as well.  I have corn off to the side, well I will have corn if I can get a pesky squirrel to leave it alone...grrr!

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This coop took MANY long hours for my sweet husband and several hundred dollars in hardware cloth to protect the girls from predators.  I am so thankful for a handy husband who can do things like this...it really is a blessing.

 

We had our first visitors the Cope Coop a couple of weeks ago.  My sister brought 3 of my daycare kids down for the afternoon to eat lunch and snuggle the new babies...ok, snuggle may be an exaggeration, but they did get to hold them without too much drama!  Peppermint Patty is the most tolerant to being held, and the most aggressive to get mealworms...she is quite a character!

 



Here are their most recent pictures, taken just this morning...they were quite curious about my camera, all the while looking to see if I had mealworms in my hand.

If any of you out in blog land are considering chickens, here are a few things that I didn't know before I started researching and raising chickens.

1. They poop a lot.  Like, really, a lot.  And they do it while roosting, while walking and while eating or drinking...it's really quite interesting.  Gives new meaning of when you gotta go, you gotta go!
2. They don't really care if they walk in said poop and it gets on their feet.  And the best way to find that out is to pick one up...I have had more poop on my hands in 3 weeks than in 20 years of providing child care. Seriously.
3. I was all prepared to throw my table scraps out and have them go crazy, however, mine only eat their food and mealworms.  Maybe one day I can take cute pictures of them eating watermelon or leftover salad greens like I see other people post.
4. They lay eggs starting about 18 weeks old or so.  And they have a "cycle" of 24 hours and lay during each one.  That's kinda crazy when you think about it.  So when my girls start laying, we'll have 30 to 40 eggs or so a week. I really need to start a Pinterest board of egg recipes.
5. They don't cluck right away.  They do this high pitched cheep and have a fussy voice that I can't quite verbalize, but you know it when you hear it.  Gracie Lou has it perfected...good grief she is a chatty one.
6. Holding a chicken, realizing which parts of the chicken correspond with the meat I buy at the store freaks me out a bit.  I already suffer from the "separate my meat from the animal" mind diversion tactics - I don't eat meat off the bone, prefer boneless to bone in always and would become a vegetarian before I slaughtered my own meat.  Like, for real.  My girls are for eggs only and when the time comes that they are no longer laying or need to be put down - well...I am not ready for that yet, so let's just not go there for now, shall we?  Yes, we shall.
7. Crazy chicken lady and chicken whisperer are my nicknames from my friends, but if you search for chicken forums, facebook groups or chat rooms - there are some crazy chicken folk for sure - and they post about everything under the sun from poop to random attacks on their flock to how to slaughter...I could spend days reading them and still learn something new all the time.
8. I wish my run was bigger already, just so they could scratch new grass every day.  I am working on a few ideas - my husband will be thrilled.  Or you know, not so much.
9. There are such things in this world as chicken tractors and chicken tunnels and they are both equally really cool and I want them both for my flock.
10. Chicken babysitters cost $10 a day.  Just in case you need to use mine.  I'll recommend her.

There is more to this story as we learn and watch them grow and start laying eggs...I'll keep you posted.  Until then...enjoy your week and be a blessing to those around you!