Happy Halloween!

I have found yet another cool point to having chickens in the house. With two small kids, a just as messy husband and four pumpkins to crave my kitchen floor looked like a pumpkin had been murdered. I looked at all the wet and sticky seeds and strings and thought sweeping this up is going to suck. Then "BING" and light went off in my head. Let out the chickens! I opened their condo door and they went crazy. I didn't even have to sweep until the next morning. I did have to pick up three piles of chicken doodles but that is easier then sweeping up pumpkin guts. They didn't eat the big seeds but they dried out over night and were easily swept up. I read somewhere that pumpkin seeds are a natural de-wormer for chickens. I also took some pumpkin guts, seeds and flesh and put it the fridge. I will be grinding it up and freeze it for the chickens as treats during the rainy winter days where they are stuck in the house for a few days. Maybe next year I'll dress as a farmer and go to my kid's school with a chicken on my shoulder. Now that would be a hoot.

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.

Our First Egg !!

I brought my girls inside last night at 7 pm. At 10 pm I started getting everyone ready for bed. I went to cover the girls' "condo" and there was an egg on the floor. Darby my polish was the one who layed it. She has been showing the "signs" of laying for about 4 days now. I was all happy then I looked at the egg better and saw it was just a yolk with a stiff membrane. Then I saw an opened white shell sitting in a pool of goo. I'm sure the chickens messed with the egg but this still looks weird. I'll be carefully looking for eggs now. I hope her next one is more normal. I'm glad I did not miss it. I was worried she'd lay after I went on my trip.

The Indoor Coop

Our luxury indoor chicken coop is finished. It was finished a while ago but with the computer crash I was not able to post pictures. At least it is done now, with a lot of help from my father and my neighbor with the sawing and building. Also from my husband who watched the kids for me.

It's a 4 by 2 1/2 foot pen with 8 inch sides and half inch galvanized mesh "cloth". I use Swheat Scoop cat litter for the floor and just scoop out the dried poop about once a week. I cover it at night with a sheet but I will soon get a nicer cover. I will also soon be getting and custom designing their nest boxes. I'm thinking of making a country cottage house with a white picket fence and green roof. Don't say it I know I'm going bonkers but hey this thing is in my kitchen and I want it to look nice. Enjoy the pictures.

Computer Crash

Ok I am so sorry for this long gap in posts but I lost my computer for four weeks due to spyware crap. A friend of ours saved it and all our info on it but it took a long time to fix because he lives 2 hours from us and gas is way to expensive to be driving that far just to fix a computer. So I had to wait until we planned a trip down there to do a few more chores.
Unfortunately I afraid that to long of a time gap has past to continue the week to week posting so I'm just going to post when I have news or cute bits. I will post the step by step pictures I have of the indoor coop condo and new pictures of the girls. Give me a few days to get all this up. Great to be back on the web and looking forward to the future.

Our Little New Comer

Well, I've done it to myself again. If there is an animal in need and I just can't say no. One of Megan's friends Mother's called me on Sunday in hopes I would know how and be able to take care of a little duckling. It was caught by accident by a fishermen. He looked all up and down the Slough looking for the Mama before he brought it back to the docks. I got to pick it up from school this morning. It is so cute. It's is about the size of a fluffy golf ball. I got out my old fish tank and but bedding in it. The water bowl has the marbles in it so the duckling will not it too wet. I can't feed it the chicken's food so I grounded up some salad greens and put it in a bowl and grounded cracked corn in another bowl. I also put some mealworm in there for it. I am hoping to find someone to take this little guy. I'm not ready to raise a duckling and three chickens. I'll let you know what's going on in a few days.