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My tremendously supportive husband & I have 3 wonderful children, 1 dog, 12 laying hens, 2 dairy goats, 3 bee hives, and a 2000 sq foot vegetable garden on a small 1/4 acre lot in the city. In the center of it all is our small 1,000 sq foot house purchased in 2008 as a foreclosure that we fully renovated to host our growing family, home school adventures, and small home business (CozyLeaf.com). We have a desire to learn a path to self sufficiency finding ways to be good stewards of the resources God has given us. We want to learn to live with less as we laydown roots to our little homestead.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Chicks first run in the yard...5 weeks old!


 Addie loves these baby chicks! She has taken such good care of them. It is quite funny how much they trust her and seem to really like her too. The chicks are still in their own area and separated from the grown hens, but on Saturday we gave a few chicks a run around the yard to see how they would do. They really did quite well! 


Addie picked out 5 chicks to have the first run in the yard and she kept a good eye on them to make sure the grown hens didn't hurt them. She introduced them to their "home to be" (the coop) and then mostly carried them around and showed them the yard one at a time. She likes to carry the chicks under her arm like a little football...the chicks seem to feel pretty safe and don't try to get away. I was afraid Addie would hold them too tight or hold them in a way that would hurt them, but she seems to know just how to hold them.  

The chicks are getting big and starting to have quite a few feathers. We can already tell a few of the chicks that will be roosters because their combs are getting big and red!

Every once in a while Addie would take a break from carrying around a little chick to go sing to one of the goats. Poppy is getting quite large and I can tell she is so uncomfortable...she is due to kid any day now! Addie went and sat in the goat barn with her to pet, sing and feed her. It was very adorable!


2 comments:

  1. Raising baby chicks is so much fun. We have six that will be 5 weeks old on Saturday. We are lucky in that we live in the south and the chicks have gone outside in a playpen any day that the temps have reached 75. A week from today they will go into their own coop. Our bigger coop has 6 game hens, one rooster and five hens.
    Blessings
    Diane

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  2. Diane, that weather sounds nice! Our weather keeps teasing us and we will have a great 70+ degree day and then all the sudden switch back to the cool days and the 40 degree night :( We have been letting the chicks run around the yard all day and then we just wrangle them back up in their own area at night (not quite sure if they are big enough to "tough it out" with the big Hens) But soon the hot summer will be here!

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