Chickens!

So….

Yeah…

This has been in the works for a long time. I mean over a year! I have wanted chickens for quite sometime and Adam’s answer has always been a definite no! But I eventually sweet talked him into letting me have some chickens, what he thought was initially only going to be 2 has grown, but more on that in another post!

We ordered by the mail (who knew?!) day-old chicks and anxiously awaited the day they would arrive. We had ordered 5 total chicks since that was the minimum they could ship to our area and only 2 made it.. well actually 3 made it but one wasn’t doing well and actually died in my hands- it was hard to watch, but fortunately the other two were doing well and we were able to take our minds of the other 3. (I did make Adam give them a proper burial.)



Meet Lucy… this is a white silkie, named after Ava’s great-great-grandmother, how’s that for a legacy?! Hey, I died and went to Heaven and all I got was chicken named after me! haha!



This is Lily, she is an Easter Egger, meaning she will lay colored eggs (pastel colors like blue and green)



We were all pretty enthralled with them- they were so cute and you better be ready to pick up both because if one was ever without the other or couldn’t find her, they would chirp so loud until they found each other!



They were like our newborn babies, all we did for the first few days was sit around and watch them… I’m not sure if that speaks to how cute they were or to how boring our lives are?…



When they were only a few days they would fall asleep standing up and almost fall down, which kept waking them up. Eventually they starting laying down with their wings spread out.



The 3-5 days I had them only on paper towels, since they were so young and no mama hen to teach them, they needed to figure out what was food and what wasn’t, so it made it a little easier without the shavings in the box.



Eventually I added shavings as they grew. They each developed their own personalities but they were still inseparable.



We would take them outside and watch over them ‘like hawks’ haha!



Then came the real reason I needed to sweet talk Adam… the Chicken Coop, which has been affectionately named Cluckingham Princess Palace haha!



I don’t do anything without researching the heck out of it (thanks Dad) and I also have very specific objectives, so the coop was no different. Poor Adam, I think he wanted to put me out on the street corner with my box of chicks!



The chicks ‘sunning’



Adam was amazing and worked with only a slight amount of complaining…



We would work on it in the evenings for a couple hours each night, which I’m not sure if that made it better or worse, we didn’t tire of working on it each day, but it drug the project out a lot longer…



Eventually we added doors/windows and Ava claimed it as her playhouse temporarily.

I wanted to make sure it was completely safe from predators, there is no way in this coop unless you are a human, and even then it isn’t super easy! We will eventually build a run out to the side to give them more room.



When the chicks were about 4 weeks old we moved them out and they now rule the palace! I’ll post more updates soon!