The Girls

Aren't these some good lookin' chickens?  They were given to me by my friend Mary when they were just a couple of weeks old.  Her kindergarten class hatched them in an incubator and Mary needed someone to take them.  We volunteered and we're so happy we did.  For their first few weeks in our care they lived in a big cardboard box in my classroom where my students lovingly care for them.  One boy particularly loved the little chicks.  He would put one little chick in the front pocket of his hoodie sweatshirt and keep it warm all day long.  But babies grow up and by the end of the school year the babies were no longer babies.  They were adolescents and not nearly as cute, so it was time to move them outside into their coop.

It wasn't long before we knew we had five hens and three roosters.  Yes.  Three roosters.  We had never raised chickens before so we thought that maybe we could keep them all.  It wasn't long before their aggression towards each other made us realize we were crazy.   One by one the roosters had to go.  I tried dealing with the last guy, but when it got to the point that I needed to arm myself with a snow shovel and hit him across the chicken yard in order to get the eggs we decided he would be supper.  I had never ever had to hit something the way I had to hit him to get him to stay away from me.  It was an awful feeling.  The adrenaline and the violence--I hated it.  So, I really didn't mind when I didn't have to deal with him in the coop any longer.  I cooked him in the slow cooker and he was pretty tasty. We made several meals out of him and I can't explain how satisfying it was to eat him in an enchilada.  
Anyways, now we have six hens.  The sixth hen came from the following year's incubation that I did with my students.  Of the 18 eggs we put in the incubator six hatched.  All of the other chicks went to other broods, but I got one little baby hen.  They are an heirloom breed called Dominiques.  Aren't they pretty?  

Scritch, scratchin' around in the litter, making my garden some great compost!  

This corn is just so tasty...

A good mama getting sitting on her eggs.  If only there were a rooster around.  Sigh.  Maybe next year?  It would be pretty sweet to have some little chicks running around the hen house.  I was thinking that if we incubated more eggs this spring maybe, just maybe I would try the rooster thing again.   I'm probably nuts, but maybe the next one will be docile?   

A sure sign of spring:  Five beautiful eggs!  Thanks, girls!