Saturday, February 20, 2010

Chickens

So not only am I tired of winter, and dreaming of getting my hands dirty in the garden, but I am getting excited for a few new pets. The kind that start out small and cute, and turn into these guys: We buy a couple dozen eggs a week, and since I buy the pricey organic, non-hormone, happy Chicken eggs, it gets expensive! So, I am hoping to save a little money, have extra to sell or give away, and also have cute chickens running around making nice fertilizer for our garden. And if we can ever toughen up, maybe we could have one for dinner. We are probably going to do the traditional Rhode Island Reds (pictured above) and some of these pretty light Brahmas:

Isn't he just adorably fluffy? A good winter layer, supposedly. I grew up with chickens when I was a teenager, and we had two of these gals: She is called a silkie. They are very soft, sweet chickens. I kind of want a couple more for the amusement factor. They are quite goofily cute. We are ordering from Murray McMurray's Hatchery with some friends to be delivered at the end of March. Just in time for Easter!!! So that might be even more motivation to get Easter Dresses made... because can you just imagine the pictures? Now we just have to figure out how our chicken coop works...

2 comments:

jacqueline said...

oh, how i wish we could have chickens! but we live within city limits and there are prohibiting rules, even though we have enough land.
are you going to do organic feed? we recently watched "food inc." and yeah, i'm ready to go 100% organic. just wish it wasn't so expensive!
p.s: that silkie is adorable! it looks a little like a muppet. :)

Clare said...

Hi Jacqueline! A lot of cities and towns are changing their strict rules on chickens so there is hope! I haven't completely looked into the organic feed too much yet, but I will over the next month or so! If I can find it locally, I would really like to go that route. We eat about 1/2 organic... where we can afford to. Once we have chickens laying and a more efficient garden, it would be nice to go all the way!