eggs in the hizzouse!!!

First things first...if you are one of the three people that actually read this blog, you may have noticed that I changed the look of the site yet again. You can probably expect that a lot because I have a slight issue with never being satisfied when it comes to the design of things. I like to think of it as me giving you a little surprise every time you stop by.

And now to the big news...

After months of feeding these chickens and cleaning up endless amounts of chicken poop, it has all paid off cause we have eggs!

Two eggs!

The chickens are capable of laying something!
 

Our first eggs!

I wasn’t worried one bit. However, you do begin to wonder if this is all worth it. Sure, chickens provide lots of laughs, it’s cool to see them roaming around the yard and their poop is actually good for composting, but there is a point where it just becomes an endless cycle of filling up their feeders and scooping up their poop. You put it in and have to clean it up when it comes out. It gets tiring.

And well why else have chickens...that your not going to slaughter. 

Looks like one egg is from the Leghorn (white) and one is from the New Hampshire Red (reddish).

Now the other 10 need to get it together and start contributing to the household.
 

The leghorns

To me, they look more like roosters

The new hampshire reds pretty much full grown

A partridge rock squawking at something. 

Their younger sisters still have weeks to go before they start laying, but I have to say they may be my favorite (eggs or no eggs). They are more docile breeds so they aren’t as jittery as the older hens. One of the barred rocks will even come stand on my foot (which I immediately shake off because I do not want them to poop on my shoe), and a barred rock (quite possibly the same one) will jump on the trash can, which we keep next to the coop with the feed inside, and watch me fill up its feeder. It’s annoying but cute.
 

The barred rocks are actually really friendly.

Looking at 'ya.

The black australorp may actually be my might favorite out of all the chickens.

Hard to see on camera but they have beautiful iridescent green throughout their black feathers.

And the cuckoo marans...

...are not at all attractive yet.

I did recently have one bad incident with these hens. Usually, when it’s feeding time, the chickens make a mad rush to the coop and do NOT wait patiently as I open their door to let them in. As I mentioned, we keep the chicken feed in a metal trash can right outside their doors and I grab their feeders and fill them up. It is the same routine each day and usually everything goes smoothly. Now, sometimes the dog causes a little disturbance but nothing more than helping a little too enthusiastically with getting the chickens in the coop.

I can’t really blame the dog for this one because I didn’t notice her anywhere around the coop (and believe me when she is around during this time, she makes her presence known). I was going through the feeding routine when a chicken (probably a barred rock since they like to be in my face during food time) decided to fly onto my back when I was bent over scooping out some feed. Well, I naturally freaked out and stood up, which caused the chicken to freak out and climb onto my head. Yes, I had a chicken ON MY HEAD and we were both flapping our limbs going crazy. 

That actually happened.

And this was the one day that I did not have on proper farming clothing. No, I decided to not go an extra step and change into a t-shirt and instead had on just a tank top. So, I ended up with some very nice chicken scratches down my back...but thankfully no chicken poop on my head.  

And to anyone worrying about the chicken scratches, I did properly freak out and immediately wash myself off, peroxided those things and added some Neosporin for good measure. I also spent a good amount of time researching “what happens when a chicken scratches you.” I couldn't find anything.

This was my first farming injury, though. I am pretty proud that it took so long for it to actually occur...