Chickens

Well, after 2 years of debating, we got chickens! We decided to get older chickens, so we didn't have to go through all the "keeping chicks alive" business.  Here are some pics of chickens and Josh building the coop (with kids' help of course!):

 Caleb was king of the "measuring thing". 

 Building the door

Anna used scrap wood to build a house :) 

Coop almost finished! 

Finished!! We have four chickens.Just tonight, we found our first brown egg from "Goldie", our light brown chicken.  The other 3 are white leghorns, and they have been laying one egg per day for the last 2 weeks.  We are loving the fresh eggs! 

Our chicks in the chicken run.  

Chicken predator, caught and relocated!

We were so happy to catch the raccoon, but as it turned out, another predator would get one of our chickens.  A dog from the neighborhood near ours came in our backyard one afternoon while we were playing outside.  The dog seemed harmless enough, and I loaded the kids in the stroller so we could walk him home.  The next thing I knew, the dog had found a way to get in the chicken pen.  We only lost one chicken, but it was our favorite! We replaced her, though, and we are happy to say our chickens are doing great.

I have found chickens to be very easy to take care of.  Aside from building the coop, they require very little time.  The coop required a whole weekend and then several weekdays to complete.

We have had the chickens for about 1.5 months.  The first two weeks, we kept them in the coop, but now they free range in the day and then go in at night.  The kids help feed them scraps and sometimes carry in eggs.

All in all, our chicken experience has been a good one! We lost one chicken, but now we know how to keep them safer.  I'm hoping we can keep them safe from snakes and other vermin this summer!!