Boys and Chicks

 I love catching the boys during quiet moments...

They don't like being caught.  Retreat! Retreat!

Maybe I'll play it safe and just stick to photographing the chickens

 Yeah... that chicken isn't safe at all...

(no animals were harmed in the making of these photos)

Wild boys. Nothing new here.

Well, something sort of new.  Did I mention we have more chickens?  Those are the 4 new additions.  That's 7 total now.  Just waiting on eggs.  By the end of summer they'll be laying (or cock-a-doodle-dooing)

Around Autumn | Catching Up

We had a lot of illness, hospital visits, minor surgeries and such this past Fall.  It's time to catch up on the blog.  Here's what happened in November...

Another fail at family photos for Christmas Cards.  Its kind of amusing that I even attempt to get the boys to do posed pictures for the holiday cards... The holiday cards that I never get around to doing but still talk like I'm all on it each year.  Aiden has trouble looking at the camera or even having the camera pointed at him.  This past year its been pretty bad.  That's a whole 'nother blog post of its own though.  The only time he can keep it together in front of the camera is with his big brother and then I get a ton of pictures of Evan manhandling Aiden's face, with an occasional sweet picture of two seemingly loving brothers.

We also lost another chicken (we're down to three if anyone is counting).  It was Aiden's chicken but he just casually announced that he would get another one.  Evan sat in attendance at the "burial" with his favorite hen on his lap, Sweet Tweet.  He insisted on helping bury Sweet Chick.  He has a perfect balance of sadness and quiet bravery during these losses.  Makes me think this kid is gonna turn out to be a fine young man.  Then he cries for an hour over having to eat a bite of salad and shoots his little brother in the face with a nerf gun and I'm back to "his father sure has a lot of work to shape that boy into a fine young man"

I love salad and don't shoot guns so he definitely doesn't get it from me.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

We have very cold weather and snow right now; which is bad.  I hate cold weather.

But the chickens hate the snow (though they are fine with freezing temps) and won't step outside on to the white stuff.  Which is good.  See that open gate on the left?  That's pure freedom to roam the neighborhood but they won't cross the snow. I don't have to chase down any escaped chickens.

Which is really good cause I'd rather the neighbors not see me sporting these beauties (the ugly):

Its good that I have them because I've been making lots of trips out to the coop... because the water keeps freezing, which is bad:

But my husband, who is good and totally not ugly, went and bought a heated pet bowl and saved the day(s)!  Though the chickens still peck at the ice block before realizing its ice and then go over to the water.  Chickens aren't the smartest.

Its a good thing I dug that 55 FOOT LONG TRENCH from the house to the coop. With my bare hands. And a pick axe, so we could have an electrical outlet there. That's all a bad memory now.

So we're staying inside a lot which is good because I'm catching up on some projects like this wine night light (for grown ups, not my kids):

(pretty, huh? you want a tutorial on this one? I'm really good at tutorials - hahaha)

However, now my dining room table looks like this:

Which is bad because I have company coming over; but its a good thing its just family.

However crafting sometimes results in the ugly:

(taken with my cell phone cause that's my right hand ya'll!  I can't even hardly lift my camera with my left hand.)

And it was really stuck.  I tried soaking it, which ruined the picture inside.  Then decided to go outside in the cold to make my fingers shrink (cold does that right?).  Going out in freezing temps with a recently soaked, wet hand stuck in a glass bottle is not a good idea.  You're welcome. Because I learned that lesson for you.

I knew this was a sit on the couch day the minute I sent my kid off to school without his backpack. Or lunch.

Still working on choosing names, My husband is stalking me

I know, I know, I'm way behind on posting pictures and still haven't named the chickens.

Thanks for all the name suggestions, here and on FB.  Quite a few are under consideration.  It needs to be a family decision and Phil is too busy to be bothered with picking names right now.  Phil can be rude sometimes.  He doesn't understand ya'll are on the edge of your seats waiting to find out the names we pick. I understand though because I care about all of YOU.   In the meantime I'm still running around calling the chickens "hey".

Phil has also realized recently that he is occasionally mentioned on the blog here.

This is not exactly a good thing.

Now he's actively trying to get a blog mention.  Its almost like he's auditioning.

His "auditions" include creating imaginary fights than bellowing "blog that one"

Let's see, he also created a really big pile of laundry and named it.  Ummm, how original babe.  Already blogged that but thanks for the "new" material. And thanks for the extra day of having to do laundry. really.

There's more.  I won't embarrass him further.

Oh man, I hope I didn't just encourage him further.

Or tick him off.  He's already got me sleeping with one eye open. Ever since last week when I told him I was feeling depressed and he replied by telling me "depression hurts. depression hurts everybody." I punched him so he could feel the hurt of my depression and told him he was lucky I hadn't stabbed him.  30 minutes later he's in the kitchen sharpening his knives.  He says he was sharpening them in preparation for hunting season.  Really?  Oh yeah, I'm sure that timing was all just coincidence.

Just to be safe here's a picture of him being nice.

On a positive note all four chickens are now laying eggs.  That means we get about two dozen eggs a week. I will never have to pay for eggs again.

Our egg production just doubled but our chickens need names

We did a lot of work on the coop this weekend.  Getting it ready for winter with window insulation; painting the siding, expanding their 'free range' area. Here's the before and after:

I'm not a big fan of the blue but it was free.

While we were doing this work one of the other chickens laid her first egg.  So now we have two of the four chickens laying

The boys have been very waffle-y (hmmm, spell check says that's not a word. I say; it is now) on what the chickens names are.

Simone became Bouncy Ball;
Bouncy Ball became Sweet Tweet;
Sweet Tweet (#2) got changed to Tweet Tweet;
Sweet Chick has remained the same but we usually just call her trouble.

My head is spinning.

I told the boys we were giving the girls new names.

We have four girls, we need four names.

I'm open to suggestions... please feel free to post them here.  Just please don't suggest anything with sweet, tweet, chick, or ball in the name.

I considered naming them after my four sisters but one chicken is a little crazy, one is a little mean, and one is a little dumb so I'm pretty sure I would be disowned if I did that.

Suggest away!  The winner gets a golden egg.

And by golden I mean brown.

this is my life... well this was my life. thankfully it was temporary

Its been a rough couple of weeks.  I had the flu.  It was bad. and long. I slept. a lot.

My kids survived because I locked the doors left a bunch of crackers and water out on the dining room table and gave them an all access pass to watch TV.

I slept for an entire weekend.  That is not an exaggeration. My husband thought it would be cute to take a picture of me sleeping.  Its not cute.

 (I can't believe I posted that.)

The kids wore the same clothes (or lack of clothes) for a few days

The laundry piled up.

My husband wants to name the laundry pile because "something that large deserves a name"

I pointed out it was only so large because it was in a pile on the floor instead of in the laundry basket, which was still full with the clean laundry from Friday.

He pointed out that clean laundry was from the Friday two weeks ago. Touche.

I refuse to post a picture of the laundry pile (aka Mount Kilimanjaro)

use your imagination.

The kids have started saying 'that's whack' thanks to their father being the only non-delirious adult in the house.

me: Please clean up your toys.
the boys:  Mom, that's whack.

The chickens have learned they can fly over the fence.

Perhaps they overheard my telling the neighbor that the fence was only a "suggestion of boundaries" when he asked me how we got them to stay in there.

Loose chickens = me wandering the yard in my pajamas shooing chickens.

I see my neighbors staring but when I give them a wave they suddenly turn the other way and are busy tending to their yard. car. shoes.

I'm pretty sure they all think I'm either on crack or on a psychotic break.

This illness all started after I did a major spring fall cleaning.  With the cool weather we turned the ceiling fans off for the first time in months.

That's when I noticed the two inches of dust on the ceiling fans. Which led to a four hour cleaning binge of all dust covered surfaces. Which led to a chest cold, then bronchitis and the flu.

There is a lesson here.

Cleaning is bad for your health.

Bad health leads to household chaos.

There is so much more ridiculousness that has happened these past two weeks but I was medicated so I'm not sure I could accurately recall it.

Apparently the Universe decided I needed a little something to make me laugh.  So when the chickens escaped again this morning and a squirrel moved in on the coop (it happens often) I closed the coop door and declared we now had a pet squirrel.

The squirrel, so excited to be our new pet and wanting to show off its amazing pet tricks, started flying from wall to wall, climbing the mesh walls in frenzied circles, and running around bouncing off everything.

Very chaotic.

I did not need any additional chaos so I opened the door and the squirrel reluctantly left. Well reluctantly left in a mad dash.  I can only assume it was his last attempt at trying to impress us with his awesome pet potential.

I did get video.  Though I was too awestruck by him walking on the walls to remember I had my cell phone in hand.  That was some mad squirrel skills.  My apologies that you will never see it.  But lucky you I have one minute + of our almost-pet squirrel to share with you... enjoy

 and you're welcome. :)

And for anyone concerned: I'm feeling better, the boys have had vegetables, protein, and dairy added back in to their diets, the laundry is being tackled.  However, the boys still say that's whack and the chickens still escape daily.

Our first egg

There's been quite a ruckus in the hen house today.  A stealthy hawk has been stalking and swooping all morning so when I heard the chickens loudly fussing later on I ran out assuming I would be chasing off a hawk.

No hawk.

Instead I found our long awaited first egg...

Its a beautiful thing (once you look past the icky goop on it and the fact that it came out of a chickens rear end)

Not quite as big as a store bought egg

We also have something else in the hen house we hadn't planned on.

A rooster.

When we began this raising chickens journey I had always just planned on eggs go in the refrigerator we eat eggs.  This rooster has me all thrown off.

Now I have questions...
Is this egg fertilized?
Can we eat a fertilized egg?
Can we try and hatch baby chicks?

I don't have answers yet.  But the girls did get an extra treat today for giving us an egg and for being such good pets to the boys.

 Looking forward to many more egg hunts :)

We are a sad family today

Last night we lost one of our chickens, Lillian.

She'd been acting off for a few days so we brought her inside to comfort her.

It happened so fast, the boys were there, not really understanding what was happening.

Not until we buried her.

Its been a long time since I've dealt with the loss of a pet.  Guiding my boys through this is a completely new experience.  Aiden is completely unfazed and wants a new one.  Evan is sad and confused, he seems to be understanding what death means.

For Lilly, one of our most loved girls, we'll miss you...

The Backyard Farm

The chickens are getting bigger.  The coop has expanded and the backyard is starting to look more like a farm than a yard.

This is Lillian... she's been the favorite of almost anyone who's met the chicks.  She started as a fluff ball of yellow.  What's not to love?  She's turned into a large white chicken with black markings.  The feathers down the legs always make the kids laugh.

Phil finished the carefully planned out coop.  The kids gave it a test run before we let the chickens move in.

We've added a large outdoor run area to the yard.  It's hard to see but there is string criss-crossed over the top of the open run to deter the hawks that have been moving in closer.  The girls have taken to sleeping up on their roosts instead of in a pile on the floor.  They even put themselves to bed at night now (wish my boys did that).

They are a sucker for treats.  They come running anytime we open the back door.  If we don't come bearing treats they turn their backs on us and go back to eating bugs and grass.

No eggs yet.  They still have a few more weeks before they're old enough to start laying.  We spend a lot of time outside hanging out with them, bribing them with treats, dodging hawks... fun stuff.  

These Chicks are Moving Out

I've been laid up with an evil, evil stomach virus for over a week now (my toothbrush has been discarded and the house bleached, thank goodness no one else in the house caught it) yet my husband managed to get a lot of work done on the coop.  I did manage a few hours of painting and building myself.

The roof and the access lid to the nest box has been almost finished since this picture was taken.  My husband rocks!

The girls are loving the room to run!  We put them out there every day and let them run around til dusk when its back to the garage for bedtime.

That's chopped hard boiled egg in their treat dish.  They loved it.  I find it a little weird feeding eggs to chickens. Anyone else?

The boys love being able to hang out with the chicks.  Taking out a piece of bread causes a feeding frenzy and tons of laughter from the kids

So far the chickens have been great pets for the boys and not too much work for me.

Building the coop has been the most time intensive and cost involved part of owning chickens.

No thoughts of 'maybe we should have gone with hermit crabs'.

Yet.


E

Progress, progress, progress...

We've gotten a huge amount of work done on the chicken coop (thanks to Phil mostly).  I took the boys to my sisters to swim on Sunday.  When we left the coop was just a frame, when we came back it was starting to look like a little house.  On Wednesday we managed to cut out and hang all the wire cloth (my job).

The boys helped too. Again by entertaining themselves on the slip n' slide which wasn't slippery enough.  My genius husband decided adding soap would make it more slippery.

 ISO 100 | ss 1/200 | f5.0 (54mm)

Not so much.  But it did make bubbles.  I checked bath time off the to do list for the night and we got several hours of undisturbed work done while the boys played on the bubble slide.

  ISO 125 | ss 1/320 | f4.5 (35mm)

Really, why do we bother buying toys? Dish soap, sticks, and cardboard boxes seem to entertain them longer than anything store bought.

 ISO 100 | ss 1/800 | f3.2 (28mm)

I'm also wondering if there's even a need to buy clothes.

They never seem to wear them.


E

Meet the Girls | Backyard Chickens

They are getting bigger.  They are starting to look more like chickens then chicks.  They have different personalities already.  The boys have no problem distinguishing which ones are 'theirs'.  I'll let you guess which ones the boys named and which ones were named by me (or my mom, who named the cuckoo maran: marion for John Wayne).  Go ahead try and figure out which ones the boys named...

I really hope the name bouncy ball doesn't stick.  I also hope it doesn't indicate its future demise.  The last two chicks are the two that we are waiting to see if they are girls or boys.  They are two of my favorites so I'm cheering for no roosters.  Hubby is hoping at least one is a rooster because he thinks 6 chickens is too many.  ::sigh::

These chicks were waaaay better models than my kids.  Maybe they are all girls ;)

E

Preparing to Build

We've done a lot of research on this whole chicken business.  But when a friend offered to let me and the boys come by to see their backyard chickens and coop I was all for it!  Nothing like getting to see these sort of things in person instead of just online.

They had quite a setup!  And the coop is a little larger than the one we're planning but it was great to see and let the kids have some hands on time with the big chickens.

 Then we got to work on our own. (I swear the spot we picked is shady for about 75% of the day - I managed to pick a moment to photography it when it wasn't full shade).  The coop is going in next to the shed.  It's the farthest place from the neighbors.  I got to dig ditches.

The boys helped.

Well, the boys stayed out of the way.

Mostly.

The settings for the three photos above are all:  f/3.2, ss1/400, ISO 125.


I know it may look like a slip n' slide to you but it's actually a really long drinking fountain.

The chicks are growing fast and the weather is getting hotter by the day.  Time to pick up the pace on building this coop.


E

Newest additions to the family

The boys have wanted a pet for quite a while now.  We debated on hamsters or some other small animal since a dog doesn't fit in with our life right now.

Somehow I came to the decision of chickens.  They stay outside.  Their food is cheap.  They provide eggs (bonus!) and their poop is more manageable then dogs (in my opinion) since you can compost it.

You can order baby chicks through the mail but I wanted the boys to be a part of picking them out.  So off to the farm we go!

The boys each got to pick out two chicks.  They picked sexed link chicks, so they could pick out girls.  Boy and girl chicks are born different colors.  They knew if we wound up with a boy that it would have to go back to the farm.  A rooster wouldn't be tolerated too well in this neighborhood. And they wanted to be SURE they didn't have to send their pets back.

We went to Duda Lang Farms in House Springs.  They were great!  The boys got to see chickens, roosters, turkeys, peacocks.  She even let them feed some bread to the goats and baby cow.

I'm pretty sure that Turkey is bigger than him!

Home safe and eating out of their hands.

They'll be in the garage where its warm for the next 6 weeks.  Then they'll be ready to move out to the coop.

The coop that we're in the midst of building.

Well the beginning of building.

I'm sure there's plenty of adventure ahead for us!

E