A Chicken Update

Wow, it's been a long time, eh?  Many of you have been asking for an update on my chickens, so I felt that was as good an excuse as any to get back into this blog thing.

Daisy and Georgia

All the birds are doing well and getting along, which is great.  During the hotter days, which have been many here in the East Bay, the two newer girls (Daisy and Georgia) have been mimicking Butterworth and her desire to let everyone know that she has risen and is ready to great the day.  Which is not so bad I guess, but at 5:30 each and every morning it gets old.  At least the younger birds don't yet have that cynical tone to their squawks yet, as they remain cheerful and almost cute.  Recently, this has died down a bit and all three girls are being somewhat quiet.

Daisy and Georgia looking like idiots, with Butterworth in the back

The best update, though, is that all three birds are now laying eggs.  Georgia started first, which for some reason upset Daisy a great deal.  Daisy would just run around squawking while Georgia was up in the coop nesting.  She'd come in and just push Georgia up to come play with her outside, clearly unaware that she had more important things to do.  Even when Daisy started to lay, she'd raise a stink when her buddy was inside.  This, too, has seemed to quiet down somewhat, but it was a tough 3 weeks there for a bit.  Daisy clearly needs some therapy.

Now that everyone is laying, we get at least two eggs a day, sometimes three.  Daisy likes to move every bit of bedding away from her to lay, and as a result, many of her eggs crack when they hit the ground.  But it's not that big of an issue, as they don't really breach the shell, just spider it a bit.   Daisy is the one laying the green eggs, by the way.  So it's more of a shame when we have to toss hers out due to cracking.

Our egg bin as it stands now, with no new eggs today ...

That's it really.  So far, owning chickens has been a real adventure.  After about a year or so, I'd say it's not for everyone - the amount of time that I have had to go outside to quiet them down took a toll on my sleep for awhile.  BUT ... I'd still recommend looking into it.  Chickens are rad, and make really great pets.  If you are thinking about it, talk to your neighbors, tell them you'll be handing out eggs to them and see what they say.  It helps to have a shitty dog in the neighborhood, too, that you can blame noise on.  Works for us.

This post written under the influence of Superchunk