I did it – I didn’t chicken out. We got the chickens today!
We drove out to Monroe Farm and Feed Supply right next to the fairgrounds and they had hundreds of chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks and rabbits. The kids were beside themselves and got to choose their own chicks. They’ve named them Wishbone, Drumstick, Pot Pie and McNugget. Hopefully that will help keep us from getting too attached to them but we are going to take some pretty heavy preventative measures when we build the chicken fortress. I know we have raccoons in the neighborhood and we have a dog ourselves so it should be pretty well fortified.
Right now I have them in a plastic tub that used to house dress up clothes. I put pine shavings on the floor of it, put it inside a cardboard box for better insulation then put a toy broom across the top and suspended a red heatlight from that. I put the whole thing under the dining room table to help trap in the heat since I don’t yet have a cover for it and when I do it will probably be chicken wire.
Earlier until I finally rigged that whole system up they were a little lethargic but once they warmed up enough they started running around and checking out their new digs, stretching their legs, picking on each other and looking adorable in turns.
Toddler is chicken crazy and learning to respect the no touch rule. But my very own Chicken Little is the most surprising. He has spent literally hours sitting next to the chickens, singing to them, crooning and telling them all the things they need to know. He’s turned into quite the mother hen. The amount of empathy in his heart is enormous and somehow he’s never had the chance to show it before. He wanted them to sleep in his room but I had to put my foot down because he’s already up with the chickens and we didn’t need to make that literal…
In the future I plan to make a more detailed post on chickens. For now you can do some reading at www.mypetchicken.com. They have a great list of breeds and free ebook full of details on caring for chickens. www.backyardchickens.com also has tons of great info and lots of great pictures of chicken coops to give you ideas that you could build yourself. We plan to convert an existing old cedar doghouse into a chicken house and bump out an addition on the side so there is room for 4 or 5 chickens. I got 4 today but I have a feeling I need one more. We eat a lot of eggs!
One more fantabulouse resource for those in the Seattle area: Seattle Urban Farming Coop has a facebook page, working on a website and a yahoo chat group. They banded together I believe originally to purchase organic chicken feed at wholesale prices but the group has morphed into much more. The chat group is a great way to share information, resources, equipment and more amongst folks who live in the Seattle area and have anywhere from small garden patches (or none) to small farms or homesteads, or keep bees or livestock in or close to the city. It’s a great group and wonderful resource.
Online chicken resources:
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