Adding to our flock

We’ve spent the better part of these past two years figuring out how to care for and utilize the space we have.  We didn’t plant a garden the first year but waited instead to see where the summer sun would be hottest.  Then last year we had a baby due right at the peak of harvest season so we (wisely!) decided to forgo the garden and joined a CSA for produce instead.  Our hens are getting older and aren’t laying as predictably as before.  That, coupled with the fact our kids would like to sell eggs (and already have customers waiting!), meant adding to our laying flock.  Which meant chicks.  Which meant having a brooder space for them to be safely out of Finn’s reach, the cat’s claws and warm enough despite getting them very early in the season.

I didn’t want to add work to my already very hard working husband’s plate.  So the kids and I set out to build a large box-type home for the chicks.  I learned many things about power tools in the process, like using big screws in the impact driver on really dry, cheap wood means splitting the wood at least 50% of the time.  I got splinters.  The box isn’t beautiful.  But it serves its purpose and for that I am proud.  The best part is, we got to work on it as a team, which is always fun…

these loud “chicks” were waiting inside the completed brooder to greet daddy when he came home

nothing quite so fun as going to the post office first thing in the morning to pick up a very loud peeping box of cuteness!

 

Green eggs and…

At 2 AM Christopher came in, he’d fallen asleep tucking Rylee into bed.  He went out to lock the chickens up for the night.  I’d been asleep for hours.

He says to my sleeping self “So I just went out to the chickens, everything was all opened up and-”

I immediately open my eyes expecting him to say one of the chickens had been eaten.

He continues “I found something.  It is pretty neat.”

I’m too out of it to inquire.

“A green egg” he says with a smile I can hear.

My eyes open again and I jump out of bed and run to the kitchen, flip the lights on and pick it up.  I’d wondered all along if our beloved Bubba chicken, long the favorite of all especially Caleb, would actually lay colored eggs like we expected.  Since the first egg we got Caleb has hoped every day for over a month that his Bubba would lay an egg.  We had initially at two Auracanas to lay us blue/green eggs, but someone accidentally stepped on the other as a baby so she was gone.

So all hopes were laid on Bubba.  And for her first, I expected a faint bit of blue or green on a pale egg.

Instead in the middle of the night in my kitchen, I saw this lovely thing:

Boy was there a lot of excitement here this morning!  What a fun learning adventure these chickens have been for us!

A long anticipated gift!

After hearing quite the ruckus out in the chicken pen, I went out to check on the ladies.  After rounding up one escapee who had flown the fence in search of all my growing veggies, I peeked inside the nesting box just to see if anything was there.  And lo and behold, there was!  There was quite the buzz of excitement around here, each kid got dibs on who they got to call and tell the news to.  Caleb told Auntie “We growed some eggs from our Blacky!”  So in the course of 10 minutes, the eggs went from this:

to this

and this

to, sadly, this.

We can hardly wait for more.

They were so delicious and it felt so amazing to have raised these chickens from babies and now to be eating their eggs!

Chicken Cam

So we have not had a chicken post in a while so I thought I would give you a glimpse into the life of a chicken raised on the Strovas Farm by Farmer Rylee, Farmer Caleb, and Farmer Kyler (Audie is not up to farmin’ just yet).

First a few introductions need to be made:

Farmer Rylee

Farmer Caleb

Farmer Kyler

Red Headed

Bubba

Fluff (the white one)

Those are the main players in this world we live in.  The three chickens listed above are by far the favorite.  However, it was quite a strange thing to hear, “Daddy, let’s kill Red Headed tonight!” from my sweet farmer Rylee.  The story goes like this. we have been talking about if we have any Roosters that we are going to either eat them or sell them, but we certainly are not keeping them.  It has been easy to tell that Red Headed is a rooster for quite some time now, but it was not until the last few days that Mr. Red Headed has been testing out his pubescent vocal chords a bit.  So tonight, we listened in a bit while said chicken gave it a go for about five or six crows.  Everyone had a good laugh about it because it just doesn’t quite have the full rooster strength in it just yet.  Karissa then says that we need to do something about that rooster and I say that we need to kill it or sell it.  Rylee gets super excited because she thinks she needs to see how we are going to kill this chicken.  Don’t worry, Red Headed is still with us (I personally would rather sell Mr. Red Headed on craigslist).  It was quite an amusing time, you can imagine.

Fluff has been Rylee’s favorite chicken since they were chicks.  Even before Karissa or I could tell Fluff from the rest of the yellow chicks Rylee could always find Fluff.  Now that Fluff has grown into her (we hope it’s a her) fully white self, Fluff quite remarkable in comparision to the rest of the flock.

Red Headed got his name from being the first rooster through puberty.

Bubba, quite the  name Caleb gave this lovely hen, is not only his favorite, but also Karissa’s.  Bubba is the one chicken that we have that will lay eggs with a bluish or greenish tinge to the shell.

So those are the main players in this daily chicken saga.  Here are a couple pictures that share a bit about their life as chickens in the coop or out of the coop in their 250sf world:

Life in the Coop

Life outside the Coop

Here is a quick breakdown of their day:

8:00am – Farmer Rylee, who has been begging to let the chickens out does so and gives them fresh water

The rest of the day is filled with going in and out of the coop to rest, scratch the ground and look for worms, eat, drink, poop, poop some more, get picked up by one of the little farmers, have a major escape run into the main yard because thanks to one of the little farmers forgetting to shut the gate of the pen when they were done holding chickens, scratch, eat, drink, poop, poop some more, get picked up by a curious neighbor kid, scratch, eat, drink, poop…

Every once in a while a chicken is selected by Farmer Rylee to be held, sung to, rocked to sleep, and placed in the little playhouse for a nap.  The amazing thing is the chicken actually falls asleep and rests on the ground for a real nap.  Tonight, I heard Rylee carrying a chicken singing her own song sung to the tune of “God of this City.”  The little chicken fell right asleep.  HILARIOUS!

8:30pm – stand outside the coop because it is getting dark and the farmer’s have not yet turned ont the heat lamp for them, if the farmers don’t get the idea, they start to make some concerned noises until someone clues in on what is going on.

9:00pm – one by one all of the chickens head into the coop for the night.  They all snuggle right up against each other on the floor or on their roosting poles.

9:15ish – one of the farmers tucks them in at night by taking an official head count and closing up the coop.

They are a lot of fun and have changed quite a bit since they were baby chicks only about 7 weeks ago!

Just Heard Thursday – Chicken Edition

It’s Thursday again and we have been collecting some of the funny things we heard our kids say this week.  We would also love to read about what your kids are saying too.  We just get such a kick out of posts like these.  Here is some of what made us smile this week:

Rylee -“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…we even dance with them too!”

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Caleb (exasperated) – “I am overloaded with chicks.  I have chicks all over me.  (overheard from in the bathroom – we can only hope that any statement like this will only be made in reference to chickens)

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Caleb – (holding a tiny chick in his hands up high in dramatic fashion) “The King of the Beasts!”

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Kyler – (looking sweetly into the eyes of his chicken) “You a trouble maker.”

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Kyler – “Look Mama, I make him go to sleep”

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Caleb – “Mama, will you get a kleenex and wipe my chicks bottom?”

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Mama – “Why don’t you put yours back and let him rest?”

Kyler – “He told me he not want to go in there.”

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(in the middle of a conversation with Mama)

Rylee – “What’s that?  Oh, sorry Mama, Fluff is calling me.”  (she then proceeds to run down the hall to the chicks to grab Fluffy, the fav chicken.)

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Rylee – “What are you looking at?”

Mama – “Fluff, I am just looking at Fluff”

Rylee – “What are you looking at fluff for?”

Mama – “I am just trying to figure out what kind of bird Fluff is.”

Rylee – “Mama, Fluff is a chicken!”

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Things heard from Mama and Daddy:

“No actually, the chicken is not a sword”

“No chickens inside your clothes”

“Get the chick out of Audrey’s mouth!”

“The chicken is not a fire hose shooting water all over”

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What have your kids been saying lately?  Leave some quotes in the comments below, or post them on your own blog (you can even use our logo if you link back here).

Happy Thursday!