Farm Animals: Chickens

We added chickens to the farm a couple weeks ago!  A few days before, Jershon was browsing the farm section of Craigslist and found a listing for some chickens.  We decided to get 4 of them.  So on Saturday morning, a couple weeks ago, we drove the 30 minutes to the farm and got our 4 chickens.  We brought them home in a box and by the end of the drive the van was smelling really nice. haha. 

 

When we got home, we put them in the chicken run (where they will hang out most of the time until we get more areas fenced in).  We had fun watching them peck and scratch at the ground and eat. 

 

Merv, Agnes, and Aida thought the chickens were great entertainment as well. They just hung out next to the coop/run and watched all of us.

Agnes also found a nice place to sit… on top of Jershon’s tool bag

 

As I mentioned before, because this dream and new lifestyle was inspired by learning about our ancestors, most (if not all) of our animals will be named after extended family members and ancestors.  This may seem a little silly to some, but it’s actually been really fun so far and I love how naming our animals after family/ancestors imitates conversations about these particular extended family members and/or ancestors and helps to keep them alive in our hearts and minds. 

It reminds me of this quote by David Eagleman: “There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”  

The names that we chose for our chickens are LaRhea, Sofia, Beth, and Puric  – our 4 deceased grandmothers.

The names were inspired by this photo of my Grandma LaRhea with some chickens when she was a baby.

Left: My paternal grandmother, LaRhea. Right: LaRhea the chicken

 

Left: Jershon’s paternal grandmother, Sofia. Right: Sofia the chicken

 

Left: Beth the chicken. Right: My maternal grandmother, Beth.

 

Left: Puric the chicken. Right: Jershon’s maternal grandmother, Puric. (Puric was actually his grandmother’s nickname. Her actual name is Purificacion)

 

 

We spent the day clearing out the overgrown chicken run behind their coop and then chasing them around to try to catch them to put them to bed in the coop. I should have taken a video of Jershon and I trying to chase them down. It was quite the circus.

 

Luckily after that first night of chasing them around to try to catch them to put them in the coop, they now just put themselves inside the coop every evening as the sun is going down.  We just have to go out and close everything up for the night.

 

The chickens are old enough to lay eggs but the guy we got them from told us that they might not lay as consistently on the colder days.

All day, on the day that we got them, Evelyn kept wondering when they were going to lay an egg.  The next morning, first thing when we woke up, she wanted to go out to the chicken coop to check to see if we had any eggs. I told her that it was too early (the chickens were probably still asleep) and there probably wouldn’t be any eggs because it was a cold night.

A little while later, we went out to the coop to check on the chickens and Evelyn lifted up the lid on the side over the nesting boxes and she was so excited to see that there was an egg in one of the nesting boxes! 

 

Everyone was pleasantly surprised but she just knew there was going to be one.  

 

As we were walking back to the house to put the egg inside, this is the conversation that we had…

 

Evelyn: I knew there was going to be an egg. … I’m the only one that He trusted.

Me: “who?”

Evelyn: “Heavenly Father.”

Me: “yeah. You’re the only one that had enough faith so the egg would come.”

 

 

Jershon snapped this photo of Aida looking in on Sofia through the chicken wire. haha.

 

zoomed in a bit…

 

We’ve had the chickens for almost 2 weeks now and they’ve laid 10 eggs (total…not each) for us so far.  … not too bad for winter days. 

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