Fall Chickens

Our baby chickens that came at the end of May are all grown up.

They are so fun to watch and a great homeschool project for the kids.

They all helped with the coop construction, cared for the babies and helped raise them.

Patrick loves the chickens.

Yes, that's a chicken in his lap. Her name is Chipmunk. She's a terrible layer often laying soft shelled eggs. Even increasing her calcium has never helped. When she does lay a good egg it is a beautiful blue-green color. We should get rid of her for her poor laying but really she's the most friendly chicken ever. A lap chicken.

Surrounded by chickens my son is very happy.

That's Chipmunk sleeping on his lap.

And I had to post these because our house is covered in Ladybugs or the Asian Beetles. It's gross. You walk outside and they fall in your hair and if you kill them they stink and leave big stains on your walls. Can't stand this time of year for the bugs. Ewww.

This is Sugar-I call her Blanca. All of our chickens seem to have two names. She was our first baby to lay an egg at 21 weeks. They are the tiniest eggs but will get bigger overtime. We all watched her lay her egg while freeranging. I thought she was sick because she was acting funny. All of the sudden she laid two eggs right in a row.

Her first egg had no shell and the dog thought it was a great treat. The second egg only had the membrane so we gave that to the dog too. The poor chicken was so confused as to what to do. She felt much better after her eggs were laid.

This is Butter. I call her Butter. She only has one name. She is our Beautiful Buff Orpington.

When you pet her she squats down-a sure sign that egg laying will come soon.

Here is our older Buff Orpington named Rosie. She is moulting and looks ridiculous.

Her feathers are missing and she's cranky.

We ordered all hens from My Pet Chicken. We got 3 Roosters. One we gave away and two we kept. This is Paprika. Patrick calls him Phoenix. He's a stunningly gorgeous Easter Egger Rooster. He has gold hackle feathers and fabulous cheek puffs. We hope to breed him.

See? Gorgeous. His neck feathers are blue and the rest of him is well, Paprika colored.

He's a very good Rooster and keeps watch over the girls. He's very friendly too and by that I mean he doesn't attack me. We had a white silkie rooster that attacked everyone.

He's now living on a farm with a flock of 40 girls. In the back of the Roo you can see our two Cuckoo Marans (gee did we ever name them?) that will lay chocolate colored eggs, we have a Dominique (named Dominique), a Silver laced Wyandotte (named Raisin) and two Black Australorps that we call Panini and Licorice. Only ten layers and two Roosters.

Those poor girls are already sick of the Roos.

Our other Rooster is named Ruby. We thought this was a hen for a long time as this bird was very slow to develop anything that looked like a Rooster. He was already named Ruby when we discovered he was of the male gender so now we tell everyone that it's short for Ruben.

Ruby is also a stunning Easter Egger Rooster.

He has gorgeous iridescent green tail feathers layered with many, many colors. We also hope that he breeds with some of the girls.

See his tail feathers and coloring? He's beautiful.

It's been a great learning experience for all of us. And the fresh eggs are delicious and nutricious for our family. Can't wait until the other babes start laying.