Celebrating Easter and a Birthday for Chickens!

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

This Easter marks two years of happy living with my fourteen chickens, who came to us hatched and fluffy - packed like sardines in an orange crate.

So, in our case, the chicken came first!

This began a long term relationship of scheduled routines including daily feeding, coop cleaning, collecting eggs, chasing them about the yard, protecting them from predators and keeping them well watered.

Speaking of watering, I thought I'd share my latest chicken pictures from my newest app discovery called Waterlogue. I'd like to know what you think of my watercolor pictures!

We placed an order for chicks at Murray McMurray Hatchery in March of 2012 and expected to receive them after Easter. To our surprise, we acquired twenty-five baby chicks on Easter morning that year.  We planned to share the order with my friend, Sofia, and her family. They already had chickens but wanted more for the eggs.

My family kept sixteen of the twenty five chickens and Sofia's kept nine.

Sadly, two of our chickens died, due to egg mishaps whilst laying.

Watching them grow has been the best part. They've gone from being tiny balls of fuzz that stumbled and tumbled around in a narrow, confined space under a heater lamp, to being feathered out and quick stepping in the back yard under the sun and a wide open sky!

Our chickens are friendly because we spend lots of time caring for them! You can hold them for hours and hours, and they don't mind. We have certain chickens that don't particularly like being held, though.  If you want to hold them, they might stay still for a little while, but they will fidget and squirm, flapping their wings until you give up, let go and they fly away.

We keep our chickens for eggs. They laid eggs more often when they where younger, but, when they go into the molting stage, they don't lay very much. You might get three or four eggs a day depending on luck. But now, they lay around nine to thirteen eggs a day.

The plan with my chickens is to keep them healthy and help them to live a long and happy life. Experts say that chickens can live anywhere from 1-20 years, so, we may have these chickens until I'm well into my 20's and on my own!

Will I keep chickens again someday? Maybe next time the egg will come first instead of the orange crate and I'll incubate them from the shell!