Chickens!

This last week was spring break, and I had something fun scheduled: the arrival of our four baby chickens! These girls are the cutest little fluff balls. Chickens can make great pets: they are friendly, like to be held, are relatively quiet, stay outside (no pet hair inside the house--yay!), and eventually give you eggs every day! I also hope they will help Nate get used to being around animals, since he's scared of dogs and other pets. He loves these little chicks, though, since they're so small and sweet. As long as he continues to play with them daily, he'll still love them even when they're huge. :)

They were born on Monday, and they arrived--by mail--on Tuesday! Here we are in the car after we picked them up at the post office:


We got home and opened them up:



Nate picked one of the brown ones and named her Star. Lucy's is the yellow one--named Joy. And Levi picked another brown one... he *finally* settled on the name Minion (previous names include Mario, Moon, Luigi, Moonshadow, Toad, and Smarty). The black one, Dottie, is mine. :)

Star:

Joy:

The children also helped me this week to build the chicken coop. The babies won't live in it until they're about six weeks old, but it was nice to get it done and have it ready now. (It won't stay here in the yard; we will move it to a corner by the front fence where I'm planning on keeping it and building a protective fence or "run.")

Picture with the door open:

Picture with both sides of the roof open and one bottom side opened up (for sweeping/cleaning):

Inside the coop (the bin is for egg laying, and the long thick pole is the roosting pole, where they sleep):

I'm pretty proud of myself that we built this whole thing ourselves--from a kit and with instructions, but still! :)

So far, we are loving our new chicks.