Paris and Vienna up to some trouble

Today, Paris and Vienna decided it would be fun to bother Shadow in her favorite sunny spot. They had seen the cat walking around outside their pen, but had never really met.

Naturally the chickens were pretty curious about this mysterious ball of fur.
Luckily Shadow is very patient and let them walk around her a few times.

I know this face well. Its called the "I was once a happy cat."

Hopefully, I will post pictures of other chickens in the new flock tomorrow.

Signs of Spring

Today was a beautiful, there were many hopeful signs that spring is on its way! Here are three of the thirteen eggs laid today, its the most we've gotten in awhile. I also took some pictures of some of our trees that started blooming this week.

Our cat, Shadow. She always likes to be wherever I'm taking pictures.

Not a cloud in the sky...
The full collection of eggs-

I almost forgot, my sister and I got interviewed last week for the radio on the ins and outs of raising chickens. It was a very interesting experience, and I think she is going to give out this blog address so we will have a lot more readers! I will have to update more...

Enjoy this beautiful day!

More Mixing Pics

As you know from the last post, we mixed our younger chickens with our older ones. I was very surprised at whow smoothly the whole thing went. Usually, when you mix chickens there is a huge battle to establish the pecking order. In our case, there were only a few curious pecks and glances.

Here is Hillary checking if the coast is clear.Aretha was the first chicken to venture out into the aviary.
Aretha with big, bad Richie. He looks pretty small in this picture which would not make him happy, I am sure.

Uh oh, big, bad Richie gets into the coop and inspects the younger chickens.

Aretha standing proudly because she figured out the roosting system.

Mixing the Chicks~

The younger chickens have been growing a lot lately, and we decided it was time to move them in with the older chickens. My sister and I stayed in the aviary for awhile with them in case there was any trouble.

Pictured above is Eleanor, a Barred Rock.
Jackie and Rosalynn are behind Eleanor..

Looking out of the coop door to the aviary outside.Rosalynn

Checking out the new feed.

I'll try and post more pictures tomorrow.

Jungle Gym

The younger chickens really enjoy playing on the wood pile, and there are some loose boards so it is fun to watch them jump around them. This is a shorter video(a bit boring) of the chickens playing around it.

Future videos will be more interesting!

What to expect for this week~

This week I am going to try something a little different. Each day I will post a thirty second video of life in the coop. Actually all the videos take place in our yard somewhere. All of them are quite entertaining. I will leave you with a pic of Rosalynn

Earl picniked~

My cousin's chickens are free range, so they have a wide range of areas to strut. I wish our chickens could be free range, but we have to many raccoons and other predaters in our area.

Swingin' with the wyandottes

Today was a really beautiful day, and we took advantage of it by gardening and letting all of the chickens out. The Wyandottes flew up onto the swing and couldn't figure out how to get down. Jackie and Rosalynn

Summer at last..

I have been looking forward to summer for awhile, but it was still pretty sad to say goodbye to everyone at school. An extra bonus was that I got to see my fifth grade teacher for the first time since, well, fifth grade! Anyway, I woke up early this morning and let all the chickens out.

All the little chicks were blurs half the time because they were flying around being weirdos.

Eagle Hawk-eye....

In all the new life we have experienced this week with the chicks, today we had to experience some death. Eagle Hawk-eye died today. I am not sure how, but I think she had the same sickness as Amelia.

She is buried with Charles and Amelia.

More pics!

Ooooohhh, I love these chicks! They are much friskier than the older one(when they were chicks), but I love them all the same. Plus, they are all extremely photogenic. Especially Aretha, here...
Shadow kept stealing people's chairs....The weirdo...

Here is Lady Bird-The first to drink out of the new watering system.

Shadow saying hello again.

Proud (and grumpy) Richie

Today was such a beautiful day, I couldn't resist dropping by the chicken coop. And dear Richie, who was patrolling the outer edges of the aviary, came to greet me. He almost got a chunk out of the camera when I came a bit too close.

Richie is two feet tall(it doesn't sound tall, but it really is for a chicken), and comes up to just above my knee.
Here is where he nearly ate the camera...
Though a handsome chicken, Richie is not the nicest chicken in the flock, and it is always wise to give him a wide berth.

It is revealed!

I wanted to wait to tell you just to make sure, but now it is for sure! Yay! Well, most of you probably know already but, we are getting more chicks!!!! YAY! I know, it is going to be so awesome. We have been thinking about it since February, but at last it is for sure because I have done all the research! Yay! I had to read this 344 page chicken health guide, before we could get them, and admittedly I am not done, but pretty close! I wanted to learn more about what happened to Charles and Amelia. I've got Charles figured out-she had a type of Bluecomb disease. It has to do with infected water. I learned we have to change the water more often than we have before.

Back to the chicks! We are getting them next Wednesday!(Hey Anna can you come over after school that day? Please!). We are getting them at 7 am right when the feed store gets them. For chicken enthusiasts, we are getting Sicilian buttercups, Barred Rocks, one Americana and one speckled Sussex. Here are some pis of the breeds. Of course we are getting them as chicks so they won't look like that for a while yet! :)

We have already thought of names for them, but those will come later!

Just a Meez moment...

A few pictures I took of Meez this Sunday. And for those who don't know her as Meez, Julia. She goes by a few names around here...

Yay! Eggs!

Today we got ten eggs! I didn't collect the last two from yesterday, so we really only got eight. It is a sign that Spring is on its way, or perhaps already here!

Random' Scramble'

Here is a bunch of pictures I took on Friday of chickens all over the coop and aviary. Do you see that piece of feed that is just in midair?