We have an old 3 room farm house on our property that the previous owners had purchased at an action and moved here, the women is a potter and was going to use it as her studio but never ended up doing anything to it. Here is a picture of it. My husband and his father are responsible for turning this into our barn. In August 2006 they turned one of rooms into the chicken coop and attached an outdoor chicken run. That way the chicken could go in and out the window as they please (I would love to let chickens roam free but our neighbors dogs have a taste for chicken already, let alone the coyotes we hear every other night!Once the coop was ready I began the search for some chickens. There was an ad on our local craigslist for 4-month-old pullets for $10 each and they were only about 2 miles from our house. So my MIL and I headed out to go look and more than likely come home with 2 chickens. Well we came home with 4 LOL. All were of mixed breeds, 2 were red in color and the other 2 were black and gold.

Everyday I went down to fed them and I would sit in there and talk to them, telling them lovingly to hurry up and lay an egg LOL. I tried hard to get them to warm up to me and the 2 red ones would let me pet them for a few seconds but the blacks still will not to this day let me touch them if at all possible.

It was about 3 months later that one finally layed an egg, then about 3 days later a different one layed an egg also. From that day on we have not bought an eggs.

In March of this years I decided that we should raise some chicks, that way I could pick the breed I wanted (Delawares) and they would be more people friendly. So I went to our local feed store and had them order the 5 of the ones I wanted and waited patiently until their arrival. Everyone was excited for them to come...we went back to the feed store to pick them up and they had not arrived yet, it would be another week! That would mean that they would be home the same week as my sons 11th birthday party. The brooder I had set up was in the kitchen and I was worried that it might be a bit to stressful for the little chicks but everything went fine and the chicks were a big hit with everyone. Gosh were they cute and they were of course handled a lot and we luckily did not have any die on us.

Of that batch of 5, 3 of them demand to be pet as soon as I go into the coop, 1 will kind of allow you to pet her and 1 does not want to be pet at all. But all of them are right there under foot every time I am in there. So not I am not so sure which I like best the first four mixed breeds that keep their distance or the five Delawares who are pretty much in your face LOL. All of them are laying now and we get 5-7 eggs a day. Chickens definitely have a permanent place on our homestead!

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