Thursday, August 30, 2012

Love at First Peck





The first group of four chickens included 3 hens and one rooster. However, at the time we had no idea that the first chicken pictured would be a rooster! We decided to name them in order Mystery, Layla, Mantequilla, Buttercup and Ollie. They lived in our garage for a few weeks until they were old enough to tough out the spring weather in the chicken coop that me and my father built for them.


This is the coop that we built for them to live in! As you can see in the second picture we added a lid over the nest boxes so that we would have access to the eggs that they will eventually be laying.


They grew up fast and by the time they were living in their new coop we were starting all over again with 26 baby chicks!




They lived in our garage for several weeks until we had figured out where we were gonna put these little girls! We knew we wouldn't be able to fit so many chickens into one coup that was built for 7 chickens! So my father and I transformed our shed into a chicken coop for all of them to live!






Please mind the mess in the coop! My sister accidentally tipped the water jug over in the coop so I had to remove a lot of the shavings!

Now that we got all of the chickens settled into their coop it seemed like the hard part was over! Now, all we would have to do was feed them, give them water, fresh air and plenty of grass to fed on! Oh boy was I wrong! Chicken problems happened or maybe I just made them up in my mind!

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Chicken Girl Problems

May 30, 2012
Welcome! My name is Haley and I have chicken girl problems. To define a "chicken girl problem" I would say are things that people with chickens have to deal with. The moment that my father and I decided to raise chickens I really had no idea how much work would need to go into it. We started off with four chicks that were about a week and a half old from McMurray Hatchery in April. After we got these guys all settled in my father and I wanted more chickens because we felt that four was just not enough. About one month later we had 26 new baby chicks at our door! Our two groups of chickens are about 7 weeks apart and this really makes for a significant difference. 

Thirty chickens entitles a lot of "chicken girl problems" (We had 31 but unfortunately one of them ended up being a rooster and we could not keep him in our neighborhood. Don't worry he went to a great farm). For the most part this blog with document the problems that I have run into with being a new mommy to so many babies and talk about how I raise my chickens. I take pride in the way I raise them and am very excited to share my experience with all of you.

 Questions & Comments are ALWAYS welcome!