WE HAVE CHICKS!!!!

So far there are two and they are as cute as can be.  I love having babies here (especially if I don't have to be the main care taker) they are just percious and so fun to watch as they figure things out.  I think this hen is going to be a good mama.  Her instincts are right on target as far as caring for her little ones.  I need to mark her somehow.  I don't want to use a band because one of the characteristics of the French Marans are the feathers on their shanks and I think the band would cause her to loose hers.  Maybe I'll get my nail polish out??????????????

In Anne of Green Gables they say a house is not a home until it has had a death, a birth, and a wedding.  Not long after we moved out here one of our cats, Penny, passed away a few weeks after having kittens.  Now we have the chicks.....all we need now is a wedding........well maybe in a few years!  (I'm not hinting at anything kids!!)

This is a little video of the inside of my chicken house.  It's just an inexpensive 8'x10' metal building from Lowe's that Steve and I put together ourselves.  You will see my automatic chicken door.  Which I think is the best invention since sliced bread!!  It has saved my chickens from racoons many times and I can go to dinner with friends without having to run back to the house and make sure the chickens were shut up for the night before the perdators(mountain lions, coyotes, fox, and racoons,  you name it we've got it) come out.

The nesting boxes are metal and from an old commercial hen house.  We only need the bottom 5 right now so I keep the top tier closed up.  You can also see where I took chicken wire and loosely closed off the setting hen and chicks and the whole back corner of the coop so she could get up and get food and water from time to time.

We do have electricity in the hen house.  In the summer we run an exhaust fan to keep things cool.  In the winter we have warming lights and a warmer to put under the watering cans to keep them from freezing.  I also have a plain overhead light.  I wanted to put in a chandelier but my husband pretended not to hear me and kept installing the plain light.  Okay, okay, okay, I guess I have to draw the line somewhere.  I would have to dust it about everyother day anyway.

That's it for the chicken news for now have a wonderful day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!