Baker County Fair 2009

The Fair here in Baker is not the normal cotton candy eating, puke on a ride event. It is ALL about the 4-H kids. Just about every girl I have coached had an animal there so Jack got the special treatment...which means he got shoved in with different animals. Here are some of the better moments...

No go on sheep and pig. Didn't want anything to do with them.

Loved, loved, loved the cows.

What do you think is going through his little mind right now?

I think he is on his way to becoming a vet.

Does This Make Me a Grandma?

Ohhh how times flies! This time last year I had just started this blog up and one of the first posts was about our new chicks. Now our chicks have chicks! We stuck three eggs underneath our ever brooding hen and twenty-one days later this happened...
followed by two wet little chicks stumbling around.
Now they are all puffed and cute as can be!

Extreme Makeover: Chicken Edition

Here it is! We finally finished the new coop for the chickens! Well, there is still a clear poly-carbonate roof to screw on but everything else is done. Want to see all the extras? You know you do...
We'll start with the basic coop design. We have a little hen house (any suggestions on paint color?) that is accessible by a ladder from the dirt run below.
I know it is kind of hard to see, but there is a small cut out on the side of the house with a latch on it. When you open it you see this...
How cool is this!? It is like two little egg filled pots of gold every morning when Jack and I go out to see the chickens!
And here is an all exclusive look at the inside of the hen house...two boxes and a perch.
The ladder hole...we cut out the floor from the old fake wainscoting that we took off the walls from upstairs. Makes it really easy to clean because it it so slick.
The ladder coming down from the coop...this needs a little adjusting due to the fact that the chickens surf down it from rung to rung. I also hung the feeder to stop them from scratching straw and poop into their food.
We dug the fencing down about a foot so nothing could get into get them (a.k.a. installed a home security sytem...ok I will stop with the lame jokes).
Also, we elevated their water up with pavers to keep the straw out of that. They are crazy scratchers and stuff flies everywhere. They LOVE the straw I put down every week and it keeps them pretty clean.
She really is happy. I promise!

We based our coop on this design but have to say that the plans were pretty sketchy. If any of you want them, we will give away our plans that we used for the project (with notes and everything). Just leave a comment!

Chicken in the Snow! HO! HO! HO!

Remember these guys...

...they have since turned into these beautiful hens...
...and are laying these eggs!

Jeepers Peepers!

I often have daydreams about our backyard and how, one day, it will be a little garden of Eden. In this paradise, I will have lilac trees growing up past the neighbor's fence line (check), a wooden compost bin (check) thats cuteness offsets any odors (check), a garden that looks wild but is some how contained and made to grow copious amounts of veggies that Jack will snack on raw (still in the works), and beautiful chickens running around eating all the bugs and laying huge orange-yolked organic eggs. Well I have the chicken part but we are still a ways from any sort of egg laying. Here are our little Peepers all snug in their stock tank.

(They are chasing an ant that I threw in.)

I feel like I should be a good mother and let them have a little fresh air and sunshine. So I take them out into the dry grass and let them do their chicken thing. In case you are wondering, these guys are Wyandottes. More specifically, two gold-laced Wyandottes (the blonds) and eight silver-laced (all the little brunettes). After hours of trying to decide which breed to raise, I came across this great website, mypetchicken.com. They have a complete listing of different breeds plus chicken coop plans and other chicken related paraphernalia. Check out these other great chicken raising sites:

Chicken Keeping

Backyard Chickens (you got to love their "chicken of the week" photo)

My Pet Chicken (I am a sucker for their breed selection tool)

Ideal Poultry (chicks arrived vibrant and healthy from Texas)