I Get Ready

This post is part of a series, please start here

Oh the novelty of baby animals.

With eight people in the family we have a rather large kitchen table.  It’s a conference table that we bought second had to contain all of our people at meal time.  Much to my chagrin, those people keep getting bigger and delight in their new-found independence and outside activities, and most of the time we aren’t all home for dinner.  Since we don’t often use the whole table, the extra space is taken up by whatever project is out at the moment.

Guess what the  project is now?  Yep, chickens.  Remember I mentioned that we brought the baby chicks home in a bin and these 4 cuties were in that clear bin sitting on the table and turned out to be quite the attraction.  We could have charged admission to all the neighbor kids who paraded past to see the hub bub. (Maybe we should have, keep that in mind for later on in the story)

Each of the 3 youngest children claimed and then named their  baby chicks.  We have Ebony, Jasmine and Ginger.  That left the tall lanky bird for me to claim.  It wasn’t the cutest bird but I’ve read the story of the ugly duckling so I had hope for her.  I named her Honey after the color of her feathers.

They cheeped and peeped and  happily huddled under their heat lamp most of the day.  Each week we gradually moved the light farther away so they could adapt to the lower temps, this took them down about 5 degrees each week.

As these baby chicks grew, the novelty wore off and the bin began to get too small for their comfort, not to mention they were a bit too tempting for the  cats so we located a bigger bin and moved them to a bedroom where we could close the door (and keep the curious cats out)  This lasted a week or two.  Pretty soon the ‘farm animal’ um…scent prompted the decision to relocate them again to the garage.

It was time to face facts.  These baby chicks were not getting any smaller (they are chickens after all) and pretty soon they’d need a more permanent home so the hunt was on…

Have you ever been on a coop hunt?   Is that like hunting snipes?  Possibly, stay tuned.

Here are a couple of absolutely horrible photos just so you can get an idea.

This is Honey, the tall lanky one. The one only a mother could love.

They were in constant motion so catching a photo of all of them was so tough, this is as good as it gets.

Top view of (L-R) Honey, Ginger, Jasmine while they are eating.

Here’s Jasmine looking at you and Ebony wearing the black.

This is the Second in a series, please start on this post.

I think I’ll blame the Scouts….the cub scouts in particular.  They have this thing called belt loops.  Cubs can earn belt loops for doing different things.  Sports, Academics, COLLECTING.  Collecting?  Like we need one more thing in this house.  With 6 kids and all their stuff do we really want to encourage this behavior?  Um NO!  However, the damage is done and my kids, even the non-scouts (girls), collect things.  Of course every collection of items is priceless in their eyes. (Maybe the ”De-clutter specialists of America” are behind this, we are grooming a whole new generation of clients for them)

In our family we seem to attract a particular type of item for collection.  This type of item tends to have legs and wants to be fed and cleaned up after.  Animals, yep we collect animals.  Of course each and every one is in dire need of a home and ‘Will die if we don’t take them in”  Here is a short list of critters we’ve had in the last little while:

• a Blue Conure bird that was rescued by some friends in our local Sam’s club
• a three footed kitten who isn’t slowed down one bit by her tri-ped-ness
• another kitty who was rescued from a raccoon trap out behind of the school
• a salamander ‘rescued’ from the front yard sprinkler box, I’ll bet he liked it better in there.
• a toad rescued from the road, he was trying to cross (didn’t see a chicken around) I guess and hubby took pity on his plight and potential demise, brought him home to show us and then relocated him
• a pair of baby ducklings rescued from the freeway, discovered about 12 of them but by the time daring hubby got turned and back to them 2 where left alive
• another single duckling freeway rescue (the adoption of this baby by another duck family was very inspiring, I have it on film and will show you sometime)
• a couple of adorable pitbull puppies, those went back right away thank you.
• a black and white ‘bunny’ also rescued from school (might be time to homeschool this one again) only this bunny is no bunny it’s rabbit that’s pushing 20 inches long.
• and many other cute cuddly furry things have passed through these doors at one time or another….

So, on to the phone call.  The phone rang and on the other end was the teenage daughter of a family in our area and, just out of the blue, she  wanted to know if we could take her chicks.   She explained that they had gotten these chicks for Easter and were hoping to raise them but they also have two HUGE St. Bernards that wanted to eat these chicks and so it wasn’t going to work out to keep them…and that prompted the call to me.  I have no idea why she called me, I hadn’t advertised that I’d attended a chicken class and I don’t think I mentioned it to anyone.

She asked me if I want these little baby chicks and I was desperately trying to think of a way to tell her no thanks.  But instead a voice came out of my mouth that said “Sure, I’ll take them”   What?  I didn’t want chickens remember?  I hadn’t spoken to my other half about collecting any more creatures and I really didn’t need more stuff to do.  A few minutes later I found myself at their house, staring down their St Bernards and being handed this clear plastic bin filled with cedar shavings, a water bottle and 4 adorable baby chickens in it.  “CONGRATULATIONS new chicken mommy!”

to be continued….Here

This post is unique in that it has taken me almost a whole year of blood, sweat, and tears to get it to this point.  It will probably end up being a series because you didn’t come here to read a novel, but I’ll start from the beginning and see where it goes.

We live in a small-town rural-ish area and built our house on a lot that is about 4/10ths of an acre in size. If you can’t picture that it might help to tell you that it measures about 160 feet by 105 or so feet.   At the time of our build we had a landscaper friend draw up our thoughts on how we’d like to have it landscaped… eventually.  Well, it’s been almost 7 years since we moved in and there is still bare dirt in the back yard, among all the weeds and rocks there’s a little dirt anyway.  :/ There were  not any out-buildings in the plan…remember that, because it will come into play as we go on.

Fast forward to last spring.  In our area, we have lots of opportunities to learn about things relating to self-reliance, preparedness, Gardening, DIY etc.  A monthly class is held in a neighboring town and that months topic was backyard chickens and bee-keeping.  We have neighbors who have chickens and I was curious about what was involved so I went to this class.  I expected to see an old farmer type of guy teaching the class but instead the presenter who spoke about chickens was a cute young power-point wielding mom, who didn’t “look the type” but knew a whole lot about chickens.  She gave a great presentation, as did the beekeeper lady, they both went into detail about what it took to keep chickens and bees.

I came away from the class thinking, ‘Wow I learned a lot of stuff about keeping chickens, enough to know that I didn’t want any.’  I know my limits HAHAHA .  Read here for more info about that…particularly the part about plate spinning.  Leaving that class, I felt relieved that I didn’t feel compelled to spin yet another plate. I could just go on with the current ones.

Several happy-plate-spinning weeks went by and then I got a phone call…..

To be continued ……HERE