Chickens

For many years we've had chickens. We order them from McMurray Hatchery and they arrive at the post office just a box full of little balls of fluff peeping away. The first batch was very much a learning experience and I'm proud to say we only lost one. We held them every day so they would be used to us and we named everyone of them. The chicken name theme was board games. So we had Scrabble, Boggle, Othello, Mad Gab, Domino, Catch Phrase and a few others who names will come to me as soon as I post this. Now we still have chickens but only the ones with a lot of personality get names we have a very sweet hen named Clementine. We have three roosters, The General (a little bantam), Chaos (a barred rock), and Pandamonium (a Amerucana). When you order from McMurray you get a free "rare and unusual" chick and for us it has always been a rooster.

I remember the excitement of finding the first egg. I still actually get excited collecting eggs. There is something special about caring for the chickens and they give us eggs in return. We have let a broody hen hatch eggs. Out of five eggs we hatched four were roosters. Because our hens get to roam free and eat bugs and grass and because the eggs are so fresh the yolks are a bright orange-yellow. It took some getting used to after pale yellow store eggs. Now I never want to eat store eggs again.