After much persuasion and convincing, Brian finally relented and let me get chickens!  He was kind enough to pick up a few for me on a work trip to Denver.  I picked up a couple more at our local feed shop and suddenly, we have a little flock of baby chicks!  We are now hard at work, building a coop for them to move into when the snow lets up in a few weeks.

We decided to name our chickens after food.  So we have Chicken Nugget (a Buff Orpington), Dumpling (Australorpe), Drumstick (Australorpe), Giblet (Silver Laced Wyandotte) and Noodle (Columbian Wyandotte).  Mostly we thought they were funny, but we are also trying to keep the perspective that chickens are food providers, in addition to being pets.

So many folks have asked me… why chickens??  Our new house is on two acres and it just seems like so much space to use!  Chickens will give us eggs, meat (eventually) and I suspect, endless hours of entertainment watching the flock.  It’s nice to be in a rural location and to be able to homestead a bit. We want to make our Mountain Happy Place into a home and this seems like a good start!

I anticipate it won’t be easy going.  We started with five little chicks and we’ve already lost our favorite, after only a week.  RIP Noodle!  We don’t know what happened, she just went downhill and despite our efforts to nurse her back to health, she didn’t make it.  We will likely lose a few to our many, many predators:  Bears, coyotes, foxes, eagles, hawks, dogs (including ours), bobcats, mountain lions, weasels and snakes.  Industrial hardware cloth in the coop design should help, but it’s no guarantee.  We are also doing our best to insulate the coop, but it frequently gets down to -20 degrees in the winter, so weather will be a factor too!  We tried to get chickens that are very cold-hardy, but even so, I won’t be surprise to lose a few.

For now, as they live in their little chick brooder, they are fun to watch as they develop their own little personalities.  Giblet is the saucy one of the bunch.  She hops right in your hand if you have food and she tries to sass all the other chicks (of which she is the smallest).  Drumstick is the biggest and bravest and won’t run away when you pick her up.  She doesn’t peck much at the others, despite her size.  Nugget is sweet but skittish and Dumpling loves to scratch away at everything in sight.  They will be in the brooder for another 3-4 weeks, until they are fully feathered and able to stay warm on their own.

All things considered, I think that raising chickens will be full of challenges, but also unexpected rewards.  We are looking forward to the adventure!