Waiting Game

At this point, the Josh had not built the run yet (the long enclosure that attaches to the coop) so the chickens were totally free range in the day, putting themselves to bed in the roost at night.

We had 2 garden beds and the chickens happily helped themselves to most of our tomatoes.

We had recently driven Geneveive down to Murfreesboro to give "her" away and we were left with 4 hens.

They were just about at laying age. Which also means they were mating age...which meant every time I bent down to pet them, they would squat into uh, "position" and then ruffle their feathers.

I was unpleasantly surprised to learn this was their mating stance and hoped I was not inadvertently pleasuring my chickens. As if keeping backyard chickens wasn't scandalous enough.

For those of you who are wondering (and for the majority of those who are not) here is a bit of chicken sex ed:

-Just like human females ovulate with every cycle, hens ovulate - almost daily.

-As is the case with human eggs, chicken eggs are the result of that ovulation.

(If you aren't grossed out enough to stop eating eggs, WAIT I've got more!)

-The egg is ovulated and discarded whether or not it gets fertilized.

-The egg MUST be fertilized by a rooster in order to grow a baby chick.

-How this happens, I could care less about and honestly, I don't want to know.

Even with all of this disturbing knowledge, I still longed for a farm fresh egg.

This was all part of the experiment of chicken keeping.

I wanted us to KNOW where the eggs came from, and to be a little more grateful and a little more reverent about our food sources.

It was time to start checking the nesting box for eggs!

Reunited And It Feels So Good

Cup, Amelie's chicken, staring longingly inside, wishing the girls would never leave again.

Backyard playdates with friends:

Summertime, And The Chickens Are Easy...?

There we were, July 2009 with young chickens newly moved out of their brooder into the backyard.

They had been socialized (and by "socialized" I mean cuddled, sang to, fed yogurt from a spoon, and a host of other things 99% of the world's chickens have never experienced) and successfully "tamed" by my young children.

They had been given names, given a house, and given free reign of the backyard.

Yes folks, it was a good time to be a chicken.

I was about to go on my first solo tour, and take along my girls (uh, my human girls that is - the road is no place for a hen) and we would be gone for 6 weeks, leaving the chicks home with my husband.

My husband who was not *totally* on board with the idea of chickens when we got them.

My husband who possibly, maybe, didn't actually *know* we were getting chickens until I called him on my way to the Tractor Supply.

The kids gave each chicken a hug and a salmonella spiked kiss, told them to be good chickens an that they'd be missed and thought of often and we hopped into the rental car and zoomed off to California.

During this time we got updates from Josh.

The chickens were doing well, and they were getting bigger.

Now Geneveive was crowing so we had a 2nd rooster to re-home....

And despite ALL my begging and pleading Josh for some reason would not stick any of them in front of the computer during our video chats.

(And I really did beg...and plead... a LOT.)

So the girls and I finished up our vacation in Cali where the temps were in the 70s and the smell of the sea was in the air, and back home...in 90+ degree and humid Nashville, Josh had a GREAT opportunity to bond with my our chickens.

As we rolled into our driveway at the end of August, the kids weren't even interested in going inside. First stop. Backyard.