The Broody Bunch

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Well, no chicks today.  Yesterday Little Maiden and I went to the LFS to get chicken mash.  They had a large box just hopping with chicks.  I asked about them but the chicks were Ameraucanas.  I have four White Leghorns and four Rhode Island Reds coming.  But the clerk said those chicks would come in Thursday or Friday.  I bought 50# of mash and half a pound of red seed potatoes for my fifth SFG.

I was happily surprised today when I got home from work.  My chicken run was up and the chicken door had been cut!  GH and Little Maiden had been busy.  They also had filled the fifth SFG so I planted my potatoes today!

It’s been a beautiful sunny day!  We’ve had some unseasonably warm weather lately.  Especially for Maine.  it’s been in the 80’s today.  The kids are visiting their grandparents this week for spring break.  So I took advantage of the warm day and no interruptions.  Last week I bought a five-gallon bucket of barn and shed paint in a barn red color.  And now our chicken coop is barn red!  I’m sure the chickens will appreciate it.

So now that we have chicks coming, we are trying to figure out where we are going to keep them.  We live in a suburb of the city of Bangor, so we are sort of in the country.  Not like the country I grew up in, but there are trees and critters and birds (other than pigeons and crows).  We have 1.6 acres of land.  Some of that is wooded.  We have neighbors on either side of us.  Our neighbor on the right is separated from us by a wide stretch of trees.  Our neighbor on the left, however, is not separated from us at all.  We actually share the lawn with them.  Our property line runs right down the middle, so we are trying to be considerate.

We plan to have a fenced in run so that we can keep our chickens safe from predators and so that we can keep the chicken dropping mostly contained to one area.  Especially since Little Maiden and I are very fond of going barefoot in the summer.  So, my original thought was to build a small coop behind our garage.  There they would be out of the way and still have plenty of space.  A couple of concerns have popped up, though.  One is how much are materials for a coop going to cost and two is where are we going to put our swimming pool?  We’ve always put our little swimming pool behind the garage because it’s surrounded by trees and offers a lot of privacy.  There really isn’t anywhere else to put it that’s not out in the open.  We’d have to give up the swimming pool.  And then the other thing… Well, to say that our finances are tight would be an understatement.  We could probably scrounge enough scrap wood for a small coop.

I put these questions to my husband.  He asked if I thought the chickens would bother the gardens.  Last spring I experimented with Square Foot Gardening.  I have two 4×4 foot garden frames to the left of the house, close to the property line.  I think the chickens my trample the small plants.  GH (Geek Husband) said that he had thought of building the coop off of the small out building by the gardens.  The out building holds our riding lawn mower, our small collection of gardening tools and odd and ends of the kid’s summer toys.  The out building resembles a small barn so we’ve always called it the baby barn.  "Actually, the baby barn would be a perfect chicken coop," I said.  "Truthfully," GH returned, "we only need it for the lawn mower."  We discussed finding somewhere else to keep the lawn mower.  Then we’d have a ready-made coop.  All we’d have to do is add the fencing, nesting boxes, and perches.  So that’s what we’ve decided on.  We’ll get the baby barn chicken ready, park the lawn mower somewhere else and still keep our swimming pool.  Problem solved!

I started doing some research online today.  I found a few websites that help with the basics.  Backyardchickens.com has a lot of helpful information on what to do with your baby chicks.  There are instructions on building coops and making your own chicken feeder and waterer. 

I also talked to my friend and chicken authority, Willhimenia.    She’s raised chickens for years and will be on call when my chicks arrive.  I’m getting four Rhode Island Reds and four White Leghorns.  I had originally wanted Buff Orpingtons and Black Australorps.  I was going to order them from Mcmurrayhatchery.com but they have a minimum order of 25 chicks!  I was originally thinking of getting just 6.  I found another place that had a minimum of 15 chicks.  But still, that was a few more than I wanted to start with.  So, Willhi told me to check our LFS (local feed store). 

When I went in yesterday I found that they weren’t getting either breed in.  So I picked up an order form for May (they had one for June also).  I took it to the back of the store and stared at the list of breeds that they offered.  Honestly, I didn’t know what the difference was from any of them unless the colors red, black or white were included in their names.  Luckily, on the shelf by my head was a book called Pocketful of Poultry.  I was able to look up the names in that book to see what the chicken breeds looked like but also if they were good egg layers.  That was kind of the point in getting some hens.  So anyway, I decided on the Rhode Island Reds that are great layers and lay brown eggs and the White Leghorns that lay white eggs.  The eight pullets cost me a grand total of $23.92 at $2.99 each.  My first and most important expense of this adventure! 

I was told that the chicks will be in the third week of May but I could call during the first or second week to find out exactly what day they chicks would be arriving.  Hopefully that will give me enough time to prepare!

I’m so excited!  I feel like I’ve just signed adoption papers.  We’ve thought about this for a while.  We’ve discussed it as a family, my husband, my two kids and myself.  I mean, this could really change us.  But we finally made the decision and in the third week of May we’ll be getting eight brand new babies!  Don’t worry. I’m not the new Octo-mom.  I don’t have any book deals and no one’s offering big money for my story.  Today, we ordered chickens!

I won’t pretend, I’ve never had chickens before and I really don’t know much about keeping chickens.  But something about hard times and economic pressures has prompted me to want to do more for ourselves and to return to my roots.  I’m a country girl and it’s true that you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl.  I’m not talking buyou country, I’m talking about Maine country.  The woodlands.

So anyway, I thought some hens to provide eggs might be a great adventure and a good learning experience for my kids.  Young Master is seven years old and Little Maiden is four.  They are also very excited!  What a great way to have some quality family time… preparing for chicks!