the ladies


We now have 14 chickens and 4 more coming in a month. My house is beginning to smell like a barn, but the coop is not done... not that that matters as the older chicks are not yet fully feathered, and it is too cold for them to live outside. I'm becoming impatient to get these chickens out of my house... mostly because they are escaping. A few days ago, when we got home, we did a quick head count and found that one chicken was missing. Our biggest bird, Gwendolyn, was hanging out in our laundry room. This is not the first time that Gwen has escaped. Chasing chickens around my house is not what I had envisioned when I agreed to this crazy scheme.



I have now completely gotten over my chicken phobia. Our birds are very friendly, and will hop right into our hands and snuggle down.


Chickens are strange animals. When we got our first brood, one was injured. The little fluffball baby chicks were going at the injured bird trying to peck it to death. We learned that this is normal. If chickens sense that one is weak or see blood, they will try to eliminate the weak bird. On the flip side, they all gather around our smallest bird, Mable, to keep her warm and safe. Frequently we have thought that Mable was missing, only to find her buried in the middle of the heap. She is always lovingly surrounded by these bigger birds.



When our first brood of chicks was a few days old, Alex was outside and saw a grasshopper. His first thought was, “I wonder what the chicks would do with that.” So he brings it in and drops it in the brooder. One chick notices it and pounces on it. Not realizing that none of the other chicks even saw it, she starts running with her beak holding this bug high in the air. Of course all the other chicks notice after that, and start chasing her in a fluffy mob. Eventually, the first chick is overrun by the mob, and as soon as another chick is able to get the grasshopper to herself, she starts running with the fluff mob tailing close behind, and the frenzy starts all over. It was like an idiotic game of capture the flag.


Popular posts from this blog

"Lick my tongue Dad!"

I am learning that a crude sense of humor may not necessarily be learned, but can also be genetic. Eden, my 3 year old daughter, has every ounce of her father's appreciation for rude humor. And we have been pretty careful to not teach her any of it. She is fascinated with certain body parts as was mentioned earlier in this blog. She likes to add the word butt to other words, and then laugh hysterically. She does these things to entertain herself, not to get a reaction out of other people. When she was "cleaning" her room one day, Alex looked in to see how it was going. She was pulling things out of her drawer, singing, "Naked Butt, Naked Butt, NAY-ked... BUUUUUTT!" One day we made the mistake of laughing when she pulled her pants down, stuck her butt in her brother's face and started chanting, "Booh-ut, booh-ut, booh-ut..." In our defense, it was hilarious, unfortunately she thought so too, and many serious conversations about privacy hav...
Read more

Amelia Soup

I find myself having little patience with people who think something is gross or beneath them, when they are simply coming from a place of ignorance. Sure, it is easier for people to not think about where their food comes from. But it is absurd to believe they are somehow better because they refuse to think about these things. I have even had people act disturbed by our eggs, because they did not like being brought to the realization that the eggs they eat were once inside an animal. Thanks to Disney movies and a consumerist lifestyle, we can have this distorted and glorified view of nature, without ever touching it. Not my family, we touch it, plant it, grow it, eat it, raise it, feed it, scoop its poop, butcher it, and eat it. From my high horse I like to pretend this does not phase me at all. We are connected with our food and the natural world around us, and I like to act like this is a higher plane of existence. But I have to confess, there are times that the city girl in me...
Read more

Babies Pt 1

Two weeks before the arrival of our third child, I went into labor... that's right. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for a while, and they were getting more intense, but one day they just kept coming. I kept track of them all day... 15 minutes apart... 10 minutes apart. We went about our normal business, taking care of our children and put our kids to bed. Alex and I sat up watching a movie, timing contractions, when we heard the unmistakable sound of vomit. We ended up spending most of the night cleaning up our son and changing sheets, while he fought the stomach flu. By 5 am , my contractions were 5 min apart and a minute long... time to head to the hospital. So we packed up our kids, and brought Micah a bucket. I sat in the hospital for an hour or so while the nurses monitored my contractions. It seemed I was in labor, the contractions were real. But when they checked my cervix, there was no progress, which was not normal. Well, then I started vomitting. The low po...
Read more