Chickens and Other new things

Well, if you start to scroll through, you'll notice that we got baby chickens! They are so adorable. Oliver cannot get enough of them. Luckily Teddy forgets that they exist until we go outside. He is the one I have to watch. He is really good at catching them and likes to pick them up and place them on top of the water and food feeders and watch them jump down. Oliver has mastered picking them up and holding them. I like that I can put out food and it lasts several days. Low maintenance animals are the way to go!

Chickens are a new adventure for us. We didn't know how many to get, so we settled on 7. I still need to finish the chicken coop, but I still have time since these will need to stay in the box in the garage for up to 8 weeks. That gives me time to perfect my coop and fill in holes in the fence.

These are the breeds we got. They are all different, but since I forgot to check as they put them in the box, I can only identify two of them at the moment. As they get older we should be able to identify them more since they will all look different. Below is a breakdown chart of what we got. The speckled sussex is the only uncommon breed, the rest are all common.

Name	Weight	Egg color	# of eggs	Egg size	Winter layer	Cold Tolerance	Kid Friendly
Sussex (speckled)	7 lbs	Creamy to light brown	Prolific	Average	Yes	Hardy	Yes
Rhode Island Red	6.5 lbs	Rich medium brown	Prolific (6/week)	Above average	Yes	Heat and cold hardy	Yes
Buff Orphington	8 lbs	Brown	Very good	Average to Above Average	Maybe	Excellent	Calm and Friendly
Barred Rock	7.5 lbs	Light (pinkish) to medium brown	Very good (6/week)	Above average	Yes	Very cold hardy
Austalorp	6.5 lbs	brown	Very good	Average		Very cold hardy
Black Sex-Link	6.5 lbs	brown	Prolific (250/yr)	Above average		Cold Hardy
Red Sex-Link		brown	Great	Jumbo	Yes	Cold Hardy

 This black one right here is definitely the youngest. It barely even has wings, they are so small. And it still has a piece of shell stuck to it's fluff. No name yet.

 It didn't occur to me, but these are brand new babies and just like humans, they like to sleep all the time! It is so funny because they just fall asleep in the funniest positions! The first day I kept waking them up because they looked dead. But they were just asleep with their legs twisted and laying on top of each other. This one below doesn't have a name yet, but she is the light brown one with shorter wings.

 This one is the biggest of them all (Below). I think she must be at least a week older than the others because she already has tail feathers and her wings are way longer than the others. This has earned her the name of Pidgeotto (A bird type Pokemon).

 This one doesn't have a name yet (Below), but she has longer wings than the other black one.

 This one is Oliver and my favorite. Her name is Bulbasaur. This is one of the only ones that I can remember what kind she is. She is a Speckled Sussex. She will be a prolific egg layer of average size eggs and very cold hard. This one is kid friendly and I could only identify this one because she is the "smart one". The babies in her cage kept squeezing out and Oliver insisted that we get a smart one, even though I thought it would be better not to have chickens that think too much. She was 50 cents more than the others. We were going to only get 6, because they had 6 different kinds that were only $2.99, but we splurged on her. I think she is really pretty. And it is nice to be able to easily identify at least one of them.

 This one doesn't have a name yet. But she has shorter wings than the other light brown one.

 This one is Jigglypuff. You can tell her apart from the other black ones because she has a spot on her head.

 This golden one was named by Eric. McChicken. She is a Buff Orphington. She will get the biggest.

 Eric got a new job, so we needed to get a second car. This is our new Nissan Sentra 2006. It does the job! Good gas mileage. Eric will be working in West Valley, about a 35 minute drive. No more getting to ride the train, but we are both excited for him to try something new. He will be working at Granger Medical as something like the Advertising person. I keep forgetting the official name.

 And last of all, I finally fixed the sink downstairs. The person who put in this sink did not seal the wood. Although it looked very antiqued, it also had a ton of water stains. The previous owners had put a piece of tile on it to make a section OK to have wet things on it. So I copied that for a while. But then I figured, why? Let's make it prettier AND waterproof. So this week I took off the sink and sealed just the top part so that it is waterproof and water stain-less. It looks much better now.

 Oliver is in love with these baby chickens. They really are so adorable. He holds them whenever he can! They will be well trained! (I hope)

Also, yesterday we bought a new shed. They'll contact me this week to schedule coming and building it. I'll have to paint it myself. But Im really excited about not having to build it myself.