Chickens sure are curious birds. We have three ages of birds. In this picture you see the older birds which were born on May 8th. They are Golden Red Sex Link, Barred Rock & Silver Laced Wynndots. I have to say the Golden Red Sex Links are the nicest chickens and the Silver Laced Wynndots are mean to the others. The Barred Rocks are neither here nor there and are pretty complacent birds. So they are about 9 weeks old. These are the king birds of our coop. There are 18 of these birds altogether. We originally bought 20 with the idea that at least 5 would die, due to the learning curve we are under as chicken farmers. Two chicks died the second day we got them.. survival of the fittest at work in on garage. We have purchased all hens, but as you can see in this picture sexing chicks is not an easy task because low and behold we have one rooster. This is my favorite chicken of them all. I name her "now him" Henny Penny... not so Henny or Penny anymore. So a few weeks after we got the chicks, the ones which are now 9 weeks old, I decided to get 8 more chickens. I was very interested in getting some chickens that lay green eggs and I also was interested in getting some chickens that grow feathers on their feet. I had heard about the Americana chickens from a farming class I was taking and was told if you include one green egg in your batch of farm eggs for sale they will be more profitable. AND.. the chickens with feathers on the feet... well frankly this really intrigued me and I had seen one of these chickens at the fair and wanted 4 for my own. So I got four of each type of chicken to add to our coop. They were born on May 21st and are about 7 weeks old. Of the 8 we originally got, we now have 7 left. Not as steep of a learning curve that I originally thought would be present. I guess it is not that hard to raise chickens! So, that puts us up to 25 chickens... but wait there's more! I get a call from Julie, a teacher from Star Lake Elementary school (the school I worked at in Federal Way) and their classrooms are hatching chicken eggs as a school project and she wanted to know if I would be interested in raising the chickens when the class project is over. OF COURSE! I said. Who wouldn't want more chickens for their farm!? So between the two class rooms there were ten chickens that were hatched and survived. They were born around May 25th and are about 6-7 weeks old. These chickens are a mix of varieties and frankly I am still unsure what exactly they are. I don't know yet how many are hens and how many are roosters. Of the original 10 we have lost 2, so now we have 8 of the babies. We just lost one of these chicks recently. Kurt found the chicken nearly paralyzed in the coop. We isolated the chick in our garage, afraid it has some kind of illness that could spread to the others. We observed it for a day, hand fed it and watered it... but this was the first chicken we had to lay to rest by our own doing. Interesting experience to say the least... I now know why we don't name our chickens! This is a hard thing to face initially. However, it is also very prevalent when living on a farm that animals live and animals die.. just a fact of life that isn't always easy to face. The baby chicks which are still quite a bit smaller than the other hens can fit through the horse fencing we placed around the chicken coop. We have had two back to back day's of golden retriever (Ginger) vs. baby chick and round two was Kodiak vs. baby chick. Thankfully we were present for both matches and the chick survived. Ginger was actually very gentle with the chick... don't get me wrong she was very excited to catch the chicken and carry it around but it was obvious her intention was not to kill the chicken but just carry it around. Kodiak on the other hand... I think had we not been there we would have been down to seven baby chicks really quick. The chicks were also getting into my garden area and desecrating my vegetables... so we placed about one foot of chicken wire around the coop and that has since prevented them from getting into my garden and the dogs have reminded them not to go into the yard.

Chickens don't really take that much time. We actually probably put more time into the chickens that we should. We secure the chickens in their coop at night. We have heard many horror stories about possums, skunks, foxes, raccoons etc. coming into a coop at night and destroying a flock. So every night we close the coop door & lock it. We call this "putting the chickens to bed" around our house. Lately, some of the older chickens have decided to roost in our apple tree at night instead of going to bed. They have seemed to be fine and no major predator catastrophes yet. So, when we wake up in the morning first thing we do is going out and open the chicken coop. We lay down some feed and scratch for them.... fill up their water dishes... clean out the duck pool every other day. I have been cleaning out the chicken house about once per month.. I have read that this is actually more often than necessary but I have been need mulch for my garden and find the sawdust and chicken poop works well for weed control. We have resident blue jays, pigeons and doves that come and eat the chicken food as well. We have not yet figured out a way to control the other birds from coming into our coop.