This has been a long time coming and with everything I have, I am so sorry that I am THIS far behind. Y’all, I have so many plates and they are always spinning so fast that I can hardly keep up woth them all.
But I have a few minutes and I wanted to give you an update on some of the goings on around the farm.
Chickens
So back in March I made a rash decision to stop by Tractor Supply and see if they had any tiny peepers, due to it being spring. Well, as you can imigine, I saw the most adorable little sweet peepers. And I walked out of the store with 15 chicks. My life officially changed forever.
My loving husband, Silvio, laughed at me then set to work to whip up some housing for these sweet little chicks. With his help we quickly found a place for 10 blue laced red Wyandottes and 5 Jersey Giants. Who knew how quickly chicks grow?! Sadly, I lost one chick during the first night home, so I was down to 14 that next morning. But did I stop there? Of course not, this chicken thing was no sweat!
Stopped by TSC and picked up 10 (but managed to be blessed with an extra one), so 11 more adorable red Wyandotte chicks and now I was looking at raising 25 chicks. Mind you, I have NEVER rasied a chicken in my life. But seriousy, how hard could it be?! (My goodness, but I am slightly ambitious AND I think pretty highly of my abilities, so that’s where I was at this point.)
Lord help me, I had NO IDEA what I had embarked upon.
So, here is a quick rundown of life with chickens:
- Chickens grow really quickly
- Chickens NEED space, like A LOT of space
- Chickens are cannibalistic
- Chickens can heal from terrible wounds
- Chickens are mean
- Chickens are smart
- Chickens are stupid
- Chickens are adorable
- Chickens are smelly
- Chickens are dirty
- Chickens are so much fun to watch
- Chickens are sweet
- Chickens are easy to care for
- Chickens are so difficult to care for
- Chickens eat ANYTHING
- Chickens should totally live outside
- Chickens MUST have space
- Roos are stupid mean to each other
Okay, so without going into crazy amounts of details in this post, you are just gonna have to trust that I MEAN every detail I posted above.
Y’all, WHAT was I THINKING?!
They do have a chicken house and a run now, which Silvio made for me. Totally protected from any critters that might reside in our woods. We have 13 chickens now, due to some culling a while back of most of my roosters. 11 hens and 2 roosters to date.
So, I now have two roos, Icky (short for Icabod) and Pirate. Sigh. And as of tomorrow, I will most likely only have Icky as my main rooster. Icky is a legit rooster. He protects his ladies, he’s already trying to breed with the hens, and he seriously wants to be in charge. He isn’t over me and kids but he sure has tested me already. That being said, my sweet even temptered Pirate has gotten picked on continously by Icky, so for the sake of a better existence, Pirate will be leaving us for freezer camp soon. I’m very sad that these two boys weren’t able to work it out. Pirate is just too sweet and never fights back. Hence the reason he was one of my injured chicks a while back. Can you get attached to chickens, yep. And it sucks when you have to make decisions like this one.
Okay, this post is a pretty good update on the chicken shenanigans that have been going on around the farm in the last few months. I’ll update soon with more detailed info.
That’s for visiting the farm today, see you soon!
In His Grace,
Callie
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