Egging Us On

So far, being a chicken family has been pretty easy! Each morning when he wakes up, Buck heads up the hill with the dog to do the chores. He opens the little chicken hatch and gets the birds their food and water. If he's running late, ooh are those ladies in a huff! During the day, the kids check on them about twenty times, because it is fun to see what the chickens are up to. They haul up buckets of scraps for the compost pile and to delight the birds. Having all the extra veggies from the day we picked the birds up has come in handy--we can't eat or store the raw food fast enough, so we share with the feathered girls :)

In the late afternoon, we take the chickens another round of feed and replace their water. It takes four pounds of feed to produce a dozen eggs, so they need a pound of feed twice a day. This was a little practical math lesson the kids helped us figure out--and how did we come up with these numbers? Well, each day in school I assign the kids reading from "Chicken for Dummies." The evening before, I've usually shared highlights with Buck about my newfound chicken knowledge. Currently, this book is on loan from the library, but I'm thinking we'll have to get a copy of our own for reference. I told Buck, "It's like What to Expect When You're Expecting," everything we need to know and a whole lot that we don't :)

Did you know it takes a bird 24 hours to process a new egg for laying? That means that by the time the egg is laid--it has been 25-26 hours. So, your morning layers will gradually become afternoon layers until they skip a day and reset back to morning. You can also tell what color those eggs will be by investigating the patch of skin beneath the chicken's ears. Thus far, we've had big dark brown eggs with speckles and smaller pale tan eggs that are solid color. However, we were super excited that yesterday--after two weeks? we had a third girl start supplying us with eggs. Today, when Brennen and Graysen went to check on the flock, they returned with both hands behind their backs.

Brennens says, "Not one!" (one arm comes out) "Not two!" (next arm comes out) "Not three!" (brother's arm comes out) "But FOUR eggs!" (brother's other arm comes out ;) This was an exciting day, because we are figuring at our current investment rate--we're averaging about $10/fresh egg, lol :)

We've discovered that all the chickens lay their eggs in one box--the one farthest from the door (which seems the safest to them--this I also learned in my chicken book). It makes egg collecting easy--except for the fact that it is the FARTHEST possible box for us to reach, so of course it is their favorite, ha! You can see in the first picture, that's where several of them are hanging out. Somehow they've come up with a way to take turns in the egg laying box--that's fine with me. Just keep laying those eggs, ladies!

Still working on naming them--but we're getting close! The girls suggested Disney Princess names (which I thought was hilarious!), but the boys vetoed that idea. Originally they were all going to have fast food chicken restaurant names, but these birds are too girlie to be called Popeye and Chester (etc.)

Today, because it has been so rainy and they don't like to get their feet wet or muddy, we transferred a huge bucket full of sand from the kids' old sandbox into the chicken coop. Graysen said, "Looks like the chickens are at the beach!" Yes, they are quite tropical now :)

Speaking of tropical, it has been raining like crazy around here! We've had little rain all year, and now the garden and coop is like a mud bog. All the neighbors and their kiddos want to come check out the flock, but the mudslide back home is a bit intimidating :) The sun is supposed to shine for the next couple days, so perhaps our tours can begin then.

I'm glad we got chickens!