Here a chick, there a chick....

If you've known Tate for very long or very well, you may have picked up that he has had a strong affinity for chickens since he was a toddler. Back then he referred to them as shickens.

A little over a year ago, he wrote this note:

Well, we finally decided to give in. (Let's be honest, I was on board....I like the idea of fresh eggs. Adam was the hard sell). 

We picked out 4 chicks from our local supplier. 2 different breeds. (One of which is NOT what we thought and we had to re-identify what it actually is).

Such sweet little chirps those first few weeks! We kept them in a plastic tub in our laundry room. We had one scare in which I thought one of our cats had gotten a little too curious with them, but otherwise we survied the infant stage and I had to educate myself on things like "pasty butt" and what temperature they needed to be kept at. They started in a tub in our laundry room. Then they graduated to a temporary coop in our garage. We initially underestimated how quickly they would be able to fly and then had to put a covering on the top of it. 

We're now parents of adolescent chickens. Hens won't be laying eggs until this fall probably.

Unfortunately, even though you may desire to have hens, the store said they are only 90% sure that the chicks will be hens. We're almost certain we have  at least 1 rooster, although it's still a smidge early to tell. We will have to re-home him if that is the case. We certainly can't have a noisy rooster in a neighborhood (I'm not sure we can have chickens at all in our neighborhood according to what I've found with the humane society for our county.......Shhhh.....Please don't tell! We promise to be reponsible chicken owners and keep their coop clean, etc.! All of our immediate neighbors know about them and say they are fine). 

Anyways. My family had chickens growing up. I've been reminded of a few things.

They poop a lot.
A LOT. 

Ok, I guess that's mostly all that I've been reminded of.

We aquired a shed from our neighbors who were planning to get rid of it. We paid a company to move it to our yard. Adam turned the back 1/3 of it into their indoor coop and did quite a bit of repairing. And then I painted it to match our other shed. They love their new space. I love that they aren't in our garage anymore.