Our family grew by twelve feet!

Last week I told you that our family had a few weekend adventures planned.  Boy, did we ever!  We expanded our family by twelve little feet.

Want to see our newest little family members?

These are our new little baby chicks after we got home with them.  That’s right!  We have six new baby chicks for our little backyard farm.  Or as my kids say, “Our farm in the city”!

We are all simply amazed at how much we are enjoying our little chickens.  They do have a lot of personality.  They grow very quickly too.  And they are messy…really very messy. 

The kids say that the chicks think that I’m their momma.  I told the kids that I’m just a “chicken whisperer”.  {smile}  It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m in there cleaning their water 10 or more times a day or talking to them while I change their bedding.  You should hear them fuss at me when I move them to another area so I can clean their home!  Did I mention that I’m loving these little chicks?  I really, very much am!

Let me introduce you to our little white house brood…

This is Pecky.  She is the biggest personality of the bunch.  See that cardboard behind her?  That’s there because of her.  Pecky is very interested in life outside of this little plastic container.  The cardboard keeps her in the container because she’s not quite ready for that outside of the box life.  She is also the bird that crawls into my hand when I put my hand into the box.  She is very social and she is a hoot!

The yellow triplets above are Chickie, Chicklet, and Gracie.  I call Chicklet by Big Bird because she has grown rather quickly.  I think she/he may be a broiler (meat bird).  I was very concerned about Big Bird yesterday because she was having problems with walking.  I read that meat birds sometimes have trouble because they are bred to gain weight quickly.  One article I read said to put a few drops of cod liver oil in the water so I did.  Today she seemed much better.

This pretty little chick is Tundra.  She is also an explorer who likes to try out her wings.  She reminds me of a little sparrow.

This little black chick sitting on top of the feeder is Scratchy.  Boy, does she like to scratch!  When I put her into the freshly cleaned home, she starts scratching away.  We have had to fix the feeder because today Pecky jumped on the feeder just like this but she fell down into it.  Good thing I was standing there to get her out!

So far, owning chickens has been an adventure for our family.  Maybe I’ll write some time about all of the questions we’ve been getting from friends about us having chickens in the city.  City chickens are something that not a lot of people around us are familiar with nor do they really understand.  Some of the discussions we’ve had with others have been very interesting.  More to come later, I’m sure…