our chickens

We decided to begin raising our own chickens this year! Well, more like Keith decided, and I now agree that it is a very good idea. I was quite opposed to the idea of chicken poop at first, but all the other benefits have now won me over.

One of my qualifications for keeping chickens was that I wanted our chicken coop to be extremely cute. Keith really took this request seriously and designed a darling little chicken barn for our feathered friends. He's been working on it bit by bit all summer, and it is now complete with a chicken run, big tires so that it can be moved around the yard, heavy-duty insulation inside, a watering system that keeps the water clean and doesn't have to be filled up very often, and a great big chicken feeder. It also has a tin roof, constant shade, and all kinds of other nifty little features. Most of these pictures are a month or so old, but I have been wanting to write about our chickens for a while, so this is a start.

This was right after Keith added on the chicken waterer. It's kind of like a rabbit feeder; the chickens just peck at it and get it right out of that little white pipe. We have plans to make that Ace bucket look more like a grain silo and maybe add a little weathervane someday.

One of the nifty features that isn't visible in these pictures is the retractable fishing reel that Keith installed to wind the trap door closed at night. Our neighbors have had trouble losing their chickens to raccoons, but I think that ours will continue to be quite safe because of all the work Keith has done to protect them.

Here is Rilla by the chicken barn/tractor/coop/whatever. Two of our honeybee hives are in the background.

One of my favorite parts about having chickens is that we get to have pets, but without the extra effort of training a dog or that sort of thing. We often let them loose to free-range during the day, and so Rilla is able to run around after them to her heart's content. They are quite gentle and will come to her willingly, allowing her to pet them and pick them up at whim.

Here are our six hens. I think they are quite pretty, but I might be a bit biased. We have two Rhode Island Reds, two Leghorns, and two Ameraucanas. They are supposed to lay two brown eggs, two white eggs, and two green eggs for us every day. Instead, the pattern is that we get two browns and two whites one day, and then three browns, two whites, and one green the next. I'm sure it will continue to change as our layers mature, but I am entertained by the current pattern.

This is Charlotte in the garden. She is one of the two Ameraucanas. The other one is named Kate. The reds are named Penny and Claire, and the leghorns are named Libby and Juliet. Yes, I admit it, I named them after Lost characters. But I happen to really like all those names!

We had two more reds named Sun and Ana Lucia, but we decided eight chickens was too many for our little hen house, and so those two have gone to live with Keith's parents.

This picture is from a while ago, but it captures Rilla's adoration toward the chickens. The other day she was playing with them for quite a while before the two of us went on a little walk to the mailbox. As we walked, she explained to me that she had been playing "I get you bawk!" with the chickens ("I get you" being her term for chasing them, and "bawk" meaning chicken, of course). It was particularly exciting for me because it was the first time she told me about something she'd been doing that I hadn't already known.

Here are some more pictures of my little girl with her little friends. We love having the delicious eggs from our free-range chickens, but it might be worth it to have chickens just to see how much fun Rilla has with them!

trotting off to the chicken coop

showing them the rocks in her bucket

just being silly

reminding the chicken how to get out of the coop

I love this last picture, but it also makes me snicker. I was snapping away cute pictures of her and paused to smile as I took this one. Then I began to wonder what it was she was trying to feed Kate. Can you guess? Mmm, just a lovely little piece of chicken poop... the only downside to having chickens. Yuck!