Chickens (and Ducks too)

Shane went and picked up a variety of chickens and 4 ducks one day. They were so cute and fuzzy. I never thought much about chickens...the give you eggs...ok that will be good. I love free range eggs. There is more to chickens than meet the eye....they are fun to watch!!! The run around and peck at stuff and actually have personalities. They are also pretty easy to care for--food, water, clean the coop..that's about it.

But, there can be setbacks with chickens too :(

Our first one we started teasing Katie and calling her a chicken killer--we have some Bantams and they are really tiny chickens. After she cleaned the coop, we had a chicken missing. We are pretty sure that she swept it up and threw it away :( Poor thing.

Well, I can't tease her anymore. I am now a chicken killer too. We let the chickens run around in the barn during the day and when we feed them in the evening they follow the food right back into the coop and we lock them up for the night. The other day I fed them, shooed them all back into the coop, did my count to make sure they were all there-- tough sometimes because they don't stand still. About 20 minutes later, Shane went to give Suzi water and started yelling  "I thought you counted all the chickens!!" Yep, one of them got in the cow's water and drowned. :(

Don't worry Meghan got a good lesson from it! She had to pick it up, take it to the woods and clean it, wrap it up, bring it home, boil it and debone it. Then the next day the piggies got a yummy breakfast.

We just can kill anymore chickens until we actually want to eat one!!!! Or at least until they start laying eggs!