Chickens!

I have wanted chickens for years so starting last summer I started doing lots of research.  I picked out the coop I wanted and got it ordered.  It was delivered in March and then it was time to pick up the girls.  Raising them from just a day old has been so fun!  Here are their first pictures:

Mary is a Black Sex Link and is our largest girl.  She's also one of our sweetest.

Nancy is a Sapphire Gem and is the prettiest of the flock.  She is also incredibly sweet and kind.

Mamie and Martha are the twins.  One was supposed to be an AmberLink and the other an ISA Brown but they look exactly alike except that Martha has a little bit longer tail.  Martha is very friendly and always wants someone to pet her.  Mamie is a little more reserved but will come to you if she thinks you have a treat!

Dolley is a Black Australorp.  We were worried we were going to lose her when she was just a few days old.  She wasn't doing very well and was really lagging behind everyone else with her activity and her growth.  She pulled through and even though she is our smallest girl she is probably our bravest!

And finally, we have Eleanor!  Eleanor is an Easter Egger.  She is the top of the pecking order and is very protective of everyone.  She's not the friendliest but she's so incredibly pretty that we let her get away with being a little bit of a diva!

For their first brooder I made a mistake and started out with something way too small!!

They quickly grew out of that brooder and I had to find an extra large bin to keep them in until they had all their feathers and it was staying warm enough at night for them to move out to their new home.  I would recommend starting with something way bigger than you think you need!!  This was the setup I ended up with that kept them safe and warm until they were about 7 weeks old when I moved them out to their permanent home.  When I needed to clean the bigger brooder (usually every three days) I moved them into the smaller one you see with the window screen on top of it.  It wasn't long at all before they were jumping up on the edge of the brooder and trying to escape so we fashioned a cover out of a window screen and a piece of hardware cloth.  I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on this temporary housing.  It wasn't very pretty but it got the job done!!

  

They got a couple of field trips out to the backyard using a dog pen and a sheet on top to keep them from escaping prior to the big move.  The loved it out there!  Peanut also enjoyed himself because he got a much closer look at these things that had been making so much noise.

The coop was made by Smoky Mountain Chicken Tractors and we absolutely love it.  The only thing that I wish it had was a big enough run that I could stand up in there with them.  It's only about 4' tall at the highest point.  They are very social and always want to come see me when I come out.  It would be really fun to be able to play with them all at the same time.  As it is now I have to take them out one at a time.  We are hoping at some point to be able to build a larger run that we can attach to their current one.  Free ranging is really not an option for us as we have a very short fence around our yard and we have a huge amount of predators (eagles, owls, hawks, raccoons, foxes, and several feral cats) that would just love to have a chicken snack!

The girls are all 19 weeks old today and when I went out to check on them I discovered that we got our first eggs!!  I think they probably belong to Mary and Nancy since they have the reddest and largest combs so far.  But...the others aren't too far behind.

I'm really excited to see Eleanor's eggs.  They should probably be somewhere between the blue and green spectrum.  I'm really enjoying these girls so much and so glad that I finally took the plunge!!  Here are some random pictures taken recently so you can see how much they've grown.

Here's Eleanor coming to see if I have any treats for her!  I just love her fluffy cheeks!!

There's Mary with her beautiful feathers and nice comb!

Here's Nancy - she's so pretty with her lavender feathers!  They all love the dust bins so I had to put in three so they would have enough - they spend the warm afternoons in them.  The sand helps to keep them cool and they love taking dust baths.  If you've never seen a chicken take a dust bath, check it out on YouTube - it's pretty funny to watch!!

Here are the twins - Martha and Mamie - messing around with the veggie scraps they got that morning.

The smaller black one in the back of this picture with the pretty tail feathers is Dolley.