Six Weeks....

The chickens have been growing and growing and growing and growing! They look like such nice ladies now.

We've been busy building (yes, another...) larger coop for them. I've come to the realization the ChickNBarn will not work for them when they get full size. The new coop is about 7' x 4' and has 12 nesting boxes. It is painted and shingled and ready for move in day, but I'll not move them over until they get a bit bigger.

The county fair was in town this past week and a friend and I took the kids last Saturday. Of course, I thought the biggest treat was seeing the chickens! There were some silver Wyandottes there, including a beautiful rooster. While we can't get over how big our girls are getting, I was still a bit shocked by how LARGE those grown up girls were! Our ladies have a lot of growing left to do if they are going to be giving us yummy eggs in just three months or so.

The kids had a blast - even though we didn't take them on any rides - but I did pay $2 per child to give them the chance to milk a REAL cow. Jacob and Hayden did great, but Katie and Andrew were a bit less impressed, I think! I'll post pictures as soon as I can find where Jacob left my camera after 'borrowing' it to take his famous chicken videos...

This week's project will be to partition off part of the backyard with chain link fencing so the chickens will have more room to graze unmolested by the dogs. Daisy is determined to have chicken doggy treats, so my hopes of having them co-habitating in the same fenced area is going down the drain. When done, they will have the new coop in an area about 80' by 20'. That will free up the current ChickNBarn/Run for future chicken expansion. Those bantys were SOOOO cute at the fair and hatching eggs may be our spring time project. What fun will that be??!!??

Four Weeks Already??? And New Digs!

I can't believe it's been over four weeks now that we've had our chicken babies. They are growing so nicely and are getting their big girl legs. They have adjusted quite well to life in their ChickNBarn/Run home.


They now have an expanded pen for the daytime. I finished the last of the panels and door on Tuesday and the chicks are very happy to have more room to run and play and graze. Wonder how long the grass in the new area will last??


I remember as a teenager having a dove cote that I could walk into and spend time with the birds. It was one of my favorite things to do - just to sit and watch them. I've rediscovered that joy with my chickens now that I have a pen large enough to stand in easily. These chickens are good therapy given the difficulties we've had lately with our oldest son's hospitalization. It doesn't do well for me to have too much idle time to think these days, so staying busy with working on the chicken pen has been a very good thing for me!