First of all, I finally have names for them all again. This took up way more mental power than it ought to have. Not that it's so hard to come up with a name for a chicken, but I just couldn't decide what to do about their names. I mean, they look a lot like the chickens we had before, so I sort of thought we should just call them by the same names. But at the same time, that also seemed too confusing, like we needed to clarify if we were talking about the current Lucy or the previous Lucy (may she rest in peace).
So for a while we just didn't call them anything except their color. The brown one did this! The yellow one did that!
But that felt like we were bad pet owners, honestly. I mean, who doesn't name their pets?
So I finally came up with a solution I liked. They have similar names to the originals, but slightly different. So our first yellow chicken was Lucy Mack, our current yellow chicken is Lucille. (And all you Arrested Development fans out there ought to love that.) And our previous brown chicken (the rooster) was Sophronia, but our current brown chicken is Sophie.
Easy peasy.
Emma is still Emma, although the kids also call her Zippy. And occasionally, the black one. Because they get their incredible ability to come up with amazing names from my side of the family. (Ask me what we called cream of wheat and what we called the road where you had a great view of Seattle? Answers: hot white cereal and the view way. Yup, we are that creative. It just comes naturally to us...)
Anyway, the good news in the world of our backyard is that all three chickens are getting along splendidly. This may seem like a dumb thing to worry about, but chickens can be downright mean if they don't like each other, even pecking an outcast to death, so I'm certainly glad we don't have any drama in that department. This whole venture has had enough drama without fights breaking out among our own, thank you very much!
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| Forget backyard chickens, these are more like backDOOR chickens. They don't really understand why they can't come inside... But it thrills Colton when they come up to the house like this! |
The other good news is that both Emma and Sophie are laying eggs very consistently now, so we usually get two new eggs every day! It's so fun to go and collect them, and even more fun when they're still warm (usually late in the morning). We've cooked with them a few times, and they cook up into delicious omelets (which are on the menu for this week!). It's also fascinating to me to learn how to take care of real, farm-fresh eggs. For example, they don't need to be refrigerated, and they don't need to be washed. You just keep them on the counter, and they'll stay fresh for months. It's amazing how healthy and easy they are when the chickens are well cared for and healthy to start off with!
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| The little eggs on top are all from Emma, the big ones across the bottom row are from Sophie. Good little layers! |
1 comment:
So cool! I'm jealous. Except for the chicken poop part. Do you have a way to keep it out of the rest of the yard, or do you just accept it as part of having the chickens?
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