New Pictures of Our Girls

HONEY

My beautiful big girl. Honey is a very brave girl. She'll be the first one to investigate something new. Honey is a smart girl and it shows by how she approaches every situation. She is also the only one that is trust worthy. She is the only one that I let walk by herself at night into the house. I still carry the other two girls. Honey's eggs are gorgeous brown ones. They are not quite as big as the large eggs you buy at the store. Honey is my lap chicken. She'll sit with me and watch TV at night after everybody has gone to bed. But I have to watch out sometimes because she has a bad habit of trying to peck at my eyes. What a naughty girl but I love my Honey girl.

CRYSTAL

It's official Crystal is a girl. She layed her first egg a few weeks ago. They are small little things with a light brown shell. I use one Crystal egg and one Darby egg to make a "large" egg. Crystal is true to the silkie nature. She is sweet, gentle, and oh so cute. She uses that cuteness to get what she wants too. Darby and Honey take really good care of Crystal. If there are treats to be had they always make room so she can get her share. The only treat that this does not apply is for mealworms. For those treats I put Crystal up on the top of the indoor condo and hand fed her the mealworms. Megan loves to hold Crystal and she calls her "My sweetie". Megan also loves that Crystal has bright blue "earrings".

DARBY

Being able to lay eggs has really changed this once skittish and scared little chicken. Now she enjoys a bit of cuddling and a good shoulder to sit on. I also trimmed away a few feathers around her eyes so she can see better now and I think that helped too. I have to keep Darby's nails trimed too or they look like the belong to a T-Rex. When she or the others lay an egg Darby will let the whole neighborhood know. Yet still both my neighbors say the don't hear her. Good for us I guess. Emily can't hold her like I was hoping she'd be able to do but Emily doesn't seem to mind. I love Darby's quirky attitude and even though she "belongs" to Emily, she is my buddy.

The Outside Chicken Run

Well here are the pictures of the outside run finally. I don't know what took me so long to get them out. Almost any parent can see what I reused from my kids. It's two of those plastic play yards. It's a little weak in the middle but I plan to put a bar in the center for more support. The pen is 12 ft. by 6ft. by 3ft. The top cover is Sun Shade fabric and it is rolled around a weighted PVC pipe at either end of the six foot sides. I am only using two pinch chips on either side of the twelve foot sides but I'm going to buy more. The Nesting House is an old cat playhouse I've held on to for 7 years. I always knew I'd find a use for it again. It's made out of the same plastic as those igloo dog houses and is big enough for all three chicken girls to cuddle up in if they wished. As I have said before I've had to find alternatives to shavings, hay, and straw due to allergies so as nesting material I use shredded coconut hull and it works great. I can't hang the food and water dispensers so I put them in the conners and tie them to the pen with rope. This makes it very hard for them to push them over. The little red bowl is their treat dish and the big blue tub is their dust bath. Because they are always on grass they don't get to dust bathe in a hole somewhere. Every two to three days I take everything out of the pen, collapse the pen itself and water the lawn really well. The next morning I set the whole thing back up again in a new spot. This way they always have fresh grass and I didn't have a big dead spot in my lawn. Plus if I see a spot in the lawn that need fertilizing that's where I set the run up. I think this is just another example that almost anyone can have chickens.