In all my years, never did I think I could fall in love with chickens ... but I have. Like all great loves comes the wonderfulness of the "I can't get you off my mind", the "you had me at hello", the "there's nothing I wouldn't do for you" but also the heartbreak, tears and despair. That's how I know I love my chickens! We started out with 5 baby chicks from my best friend (shout out to Picanins on BYC!!) We loved and nurtured them for 4 months and watched as 1 by 1 all 5 started to crow.
ALL FIVE
. Yes, I was devastated. So we took our 5 guys back to Picanins as we can't have roosters in our neighborhood, said a teary goodbye and left with 8 "girls" from the chicken man down the street. A mix of beautifulness and peeping. We have doted on them since Memorial Day, 2012. Unfortunately we lost Polly Puff to our wily little sausage dog and Sheila and Amazing Grace to what we think was a rather large bird. I was so heartbroken and thought that chickens were just not for us
but we had spent so much time building our chicken palace and love our 5 "girls" that we're determined to be "Chicken People" and in our 7 months of having chickens in our lives, the greatest lesson we've learnt is that it doesn't matter how much you read, how much research you do, how fancy a coop you have, how prepared you think you are, you will never actually know until you're living day to day with chickens as to how to raise them, how to protect them and what their needs are. This all sounds very familiar, I'm sure. So we're still holding our breaths, waiting to hear a strained crow, but we'll cross that bridge if we get to it! In the meantime, we're enjoying the fun, the experience and the peace that chickens bring to a backyard in the suburbs
. I've posted pictures in my profile of Liberty Belle, Ameraucana, Dixie Chick, golden laced Wyandotte, Lil Miss Sunshine (my favie) blue laced red Wyandotte, Holly Hox, black copper marans and Daisy Duke, splash Marans.