The kids have been buggin out for a pet for several months, and we wanted to get something in order to give the kids some real responsibility since Corban's new statement is: "Do I have to do everything around here?!" and I just really really really didn't want a pet in the house. This decision crossed out: Dogs, Cats, Gerbils, Guinea Pigs, and Reptiles. That left me with two options I wanted to investigate: a goat or chickens. he he. seriously I looked at goat books- need more space :( Anywho, I checked out TONS of library books, read lots on the Internet and got around to ksl classifieds late one Saturday night (after taking the kids to look at the chicks at IFA while jack was hard at work). In one of the books it stated-in reference to chicks- at the top of a paragraph: "you don't want sealed-up bums". YIKES. no we certainly don't! and that also means I don't want chicks just yet. So in my search to find some chickens that were past that scary...pasted up situation phase...I found LOTS of people that raise a bunch of chicks to the point where they don't need a heat lamp/brooder box anymore and I jumped on the chicken train! I had done lots of research on which breeds I was interested in and found a family in Spanish Fork that had 9 wk old pullets (girl chicks up to 1 yr old) for $9! Major steal! So I called them the following Monday and explained that we didn't exactly have a coop built yet and asked if they could hold on to them until the weekend. They agreed and we were off. Long story short: The coop building process was not an easy one considering I wasn't aware that 2x4's don't actually measure 2"x4"...he he. I learned this after my mom and I had cut ALL of the donated lumber to my specs on my HAND DRAWN plan. It was in the "putting all the pieces together stage" that I started realizing something wasn't working.
So after working all week we still weren't done by Fri. They agreed to keep them another week for $5 extra just to cover feed cost- WOO WOO! we finished it in time and drove down to get our silly new pets/future dinner. Daniel was a hero and drove with me. It was a less than pleasant drive with a torrential down pour happening so we couldn't open the windows...do the math on the 1+ hr drive with shut windows and scared chickens...PEE-EWW. We ended up with 6 chickens because they only had one left from the group and asked if we wanted the extra. Sure!
So the breeds we have are as follows:
- 2 Black Stars- Bus Pronounced Boos (I was told it was short for Busalorf sp???- meaning little darling in dutch) and Chubby Because she started out pretty mean like the guy on My name is earl.
- 1 Red Star- Iron Man Cobble Chicken- Gabe's chicken
- 1 Barred Plymouth Rock- Leslie- Corban's chicken
- 1 Buff Orpington- Buffy- Chloe's chicken
- 1 Delaware- KFC pronounced cuff+k-Jack's chicken
They've been a hoot! The kids are loving it and I'm loving the fact that cleaning the coop is a once a month job :D ha ha.
My pics aren't working right now but I will post some as soon as they are!
