Happy hump day boys and girls! It’s setting up to be yet another whirlwind day for your’s truly, but what day isn’t when you have two kids, a dog, fish, and three chickens?  That’s right…three chickens!  Our newest additions joined the Randall flock (ha!) this past weekend and have already blessed us with five eggs.  We decided some time ago we wanted chickens since 1) I eat eggs like they are going out of style and 2) we fancy ourselves urban farmers and revel in the idea of being more self-sufficient.

The original plan was to purchase day old chicks and raise them ourselves.  The only downside of that idea is it would take months for them to mature enough to produce eggs and, well, we’re impatient farmers (oxymoronic, I know).  It just so happens that one of Aaron’s customers raises chickens and offered to give him several for free.  Who can say no to free?  So Aaron and Roscoe went and picked up three lovely ladies- Lucky (Aaron’s), Fred Clifford (Roscoe’s) and Ruby (mine).

They are Buff Orpingtons and have slowly started to get used to us.  It’s amazing how providing food and water will make you fast friends with a chicken.   So far, it’s certainly been a learning curve for us.  On the first day, we quickly realized that our chicken yard needed to be enclosed after we chased them down in the neighbors yard not once, but twice after they flew over the fence.  Despite looking absolutely ridiculous scrambling after loose chickens, I am thrilled to have ”the girls” as I like to call them.

As for the chicken coop, Aaron built it almost entirely out of scrap material and of his own design.  It turned out beautifully!

He incorporate a handy way to get the eggs out of the coop without irking the chickens.  Ingenious!

 So far so good, although we are still researching like crazy in ensure we keep them healthy and producing.  Who knew they had to have certain ratios of feed (i.e., pellets and scratch), be deloused, have their coop and run cleaned regularly, etc.?  They are certainly more work than we had anticipated but the reward is two fold: not just eggs, but a learning experience for the whole family.  As for Roscoe, he’s smitten!  We might have a future farmer in our midsts!