EGGS!!!

Today I got a lovely surprise when I went to check on our chickens…our first egg! Hopefully many more will soon follow. 

It has been ridiculously windy, so when my mother-in-law found out she said, "maybe the wind blew it out of them" J.

A Quick Update

Here is a quick update of things that have happened since June 2^nd:

1. I am now 17 weeks pregnant. Things so far are going great; the morning sickness is all but gone, which is quite a relief, and other than that I am feeling good. In a couple of weeks we will get to find out the sex of the baby, we are both very excited to be able to find out what it is, as are many other family members I know J.

I'm starting to show, just a little bit.

2. The chickens are almost full grown and, thanks to my father-in-law, they now have a pest free/proof home to roam around in. We should start getting some eggs around August sometime; I can’t wait to have farm fresh eggs!

Dan did a great job covering all the holes so other animals can't make themselves at home.

This shows our "rare exotic" chicken which did turn out to be a Dominque. Also, the black one
in the middle is a Banty, basically a miniature chicken ( you can see in comparison to the
others how small she is). The Banty looked exactly the same as the other black ones,
except she just never grew very big

3. We now have a lawn! Yah!!!!! I am enjoying this new feature of our house quite a lot. They also put in a sprinkler system on a timer, so I don’t even have to water! It has changed the look of our house definitely for the better; I especially enjoy the ability to walk around the yard barefoot. I can’t wait until next summer when we have a little one to crawl around on the grass. It will be so much fun spending summer evenings in yard; I know I have many fond memories from growing up of summer evenings spent on the front porch or running through the sprinklers.  Now all we need are some house numbers and railing around the porch.

Cody made sure he got in the picture too.

Hopefully I will be a bit better about updating more frequently, but at least this gives you an idea of what has been exciting in our lives lately.

Chicks at 2 Weeks

Here are the chicks at 2 weeks.  I discovering the truth in a statement Josiah said about chickens, “It is kind of ironic; there is nothing cuter than a baby chick, and nothing uglier than a half grown chicken.”  I would have to agree, they are definitely more on the ugly side now, and to think only two short weeks ago they were so cute!

This is the rare exotic one.

 So far we haven’t had any problems with the cats or dogs trying to bother them, but the cats do think on top of the tank is a nice warm place to sleep!

Chicks At 1 Week

Here are a few pictures as the chick’s growth progresses.  Everything so far has gone well, we lost one on the second or third day, but none since then.  They are eating and growing like crazy!

This picture is actually the chicks at 5 days.

This is the one we believe to be the rare exotic, but we are not sure.  From looking at pictures on the website where we ordered them from I think it is a Dominique, but again not sure.

This is a picture, from the website where I got the chicks,
of what Dominiques look like full grown.

Chicks Have Arrived!

Yesterday we received 27 chicks in the mail (13 red stars + 1 extra they threw in, 12 black australorps, & 1 rare exotic). 

Here is their new home for at least 3-4 weeks until they grow enough to not be in immediate danger of every dog, cat, and coyote that passes them by.  This is the side of the barn that had all the doors in it, so you can see it has made quite a bit of progress.  The tires on top are to keep any curious kitties out of their reach.

I thought some of you might want to know how we ended up with chickens.  Well, it all started because I decided that I was going to do a more extensive garden than the one I attempted last year.  After that had been in the process of discussion as to what I would need and kinds of veggies I wanted to get etc. my friend also suggested chickens.  The more we talked about it, the more fun it sounded. I knew though that taking on a full blown garden and chickens for the first in the same year would be a bit much for me.  I really wanted to do a garden and the chicken sounded really fun too, so to decide I asked Josiah, chickens or garden.  His answer in a whole 3 seconds was chickens, so chickens it is.  

As they grow and as work on the barn continues I will do my best to post at least a few pictures. On a side note, there is no duck L. By the time the chickens were about to arrive the feed store in town that sold chickens, ducks, geese, etc. wasn’t selling them anymore. Maybe next year.

This is a Happy Chick Raising basket my friend gave to me. It contains an egg collecting basket, gloves and brush for cleaning eggs, and hand sanitizer. It makes me all excited for when they start laying!