The Chickens Have Landed!

Thanks to the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of some friends of ours, we now have four backyard chickens living with us! They (the friends, not the hens) are starting a business that provides the rental of a complete backyard chicken setup for the warmer months so anyone can have backyard chickens without having to figure out the ordinances and procure a coop and buy the chickens and the feed and waterer and figure out if their yard will work... everything is taken care of and delivered, with a chicken hotline for questions to boot. We're doing a bit of a trial run of their coop design and the process in general. The chickens arrived yesterday afternoon, and by yesterday evening it was clear they are not getting their chickens back.

Michael Jr. claimed the black and white one and named her LuLu. The dark red hen is now Mary's, and her name is Emma.

This blonde hen was claimed by Catherine, who named her Marie. Marie is probably the queen of the brood. She is also one of the three who gave us an egg today!

That egg in the corner is wooden. Apparently chickens lay eggs where other chickens have laid eggs, so you put a wooden egg where you want the chickens to lay eggs. In our case it didn't work, as the hens all laid their eggs in a nice little leaf nest on the ground in their house. When we found the first two, I moved them to the nesting box, but Miss Marie still laid her egg on the ground where the others had. No matter - at least they were in the house.

The girls were ecstatic about finding eggs today. I almost expected an opposite response, but since the chickens arrived, all Mary wants to eat for every meal is eggs.

Catherine made me take a good close-up picture of Marie's egg so she could always recognize her egg out of the group on days that we don't see Marie actually go into the house to lay her egg.

Emma is either the friendliest or the hungriest of the hens. She spent a lot of time on the porch looking through the door into the kitchen today.

So far I only had to catch one chicken, LuLu, who escaped by snuggling down under a little gap in the chicken wire fence Daddy strung up to keep the chickens out of the garden boxes (and the alley and the highway). Catherine was in the backyard with the chickens (where she spent 90% of the day today) and saw her slip under, so I was able to catch her before she got out of the yard or even to my garlic shoots.

And this is Gussie's chicken, whom he named Horse. So far Horse is kind of the quiet, loner hen. Perhaps her name has her feeling a bit on the periphery.

Catherine and Mary have both written me thank-you notes for letting them each have their own chicken, and told me how fun it is to have chickens, and exclaimed that they can't believe they see chickens when they look out into the back yard. They scour the kitchen for scraps to feed the chickens, and "accidentally" drop a banana that then has to be fed to the chickens, and refill the food and water for the chickens, and crush eggshells to spread around on the ground for the chickens, and relay play-by-play accounts of the chickens taking dirt baths in the yard. And Michael and Gussie run around in circles with the chickens and hang out in the coop with the chickens. They're all very pleased to have backyard pet chickens.

I'm pretty pleased that they're all so happy to have pets that eat grubs and baby bad bugs, will till the garden for me before I plant, eat up kitchen scraps, keep the squirrels at bay, under no circumstances have to come into my house, and give us daily eggs!

Marie, Emma, LuLu, and Horse. So far, they're a good brood.