our kind of excitement

Nothing unusual has been going on really unless you count not living in the hospital this winter. Yay for Bella. More chickens have arrived…hopefully we can keep them away from owls and pigs this year. Shouldn’t be to hard we went through several dozen perfecting how not to do things with them.

That’s about it for excitement around here. Although at one point when I was telling my mother what chickens we got this year it caused some interesting miscommunication moments between her and I. I won’t elaborate in detail so as to not embarrass my mother. I’ll just tell you the breed and let you use your imagination… Black Sex Links. Enough said I believe. And yes that is the actual breed name.

Of course-there’s always the turkeys to laugh at too. They are where the phrase bird brain came from I truly believe. These things are so stupid that if you don’t about drown them by continually dipping their beaks in water the first couple days they’ll die of dehydration with water right in front of them. Same with the food, you have to keep shoving their heads in the feeder. But thankfully once one finally picks it up the others follow suit. (No turkeys were harmed in the making of this blog.)

There’s also the set up of brooder boxes. Keeping them all nice and cozy as their cute little fluff falls out and their gangly juvenile forms take shape. The kids magically disappear when it’s time to change hay or heaven forbid have to deal with mushy butts. (You’re probably wondering about that last part. Trust me you’re better off not knowing, you’d never look at a chicken nugget the same.)

The worst would have to be when they tried to escape. The two foot drop doesn’t seem to bother them nearly as much as you would think. (Not suprising if you ever look into a hatchery they use conveyor belts to move the fuzz balls along!) But they always seem to be startled when confronted by the giant gate keepers and four legged furry things who seem to think they’re the original squeaky toy. Thank goodness the furry things are never far from the gate keepers.

The look on D’s face the other day when he encountered a fuzzy butt-priceless. The small puddle that formed under the chick pretty much told us what she thought of running into the giant white furry thing. Luckily for the chick we were counting chicks before shutting up the brooders after changing hay. If we hadn’t been looking for her she would have been a little rough around the edges before she was discovered.

At least I didn’t aggravate my carpal tunnel syndrome by having to turn them three times a day. Cheaper too. At least we knew that we were getting two dozen cause they were already hatched. Instead of half that from unviable eggs.

Well now I’m off to knit little cozies for the eggs we will be incubating later.