Chicken Ranchers

One of the beautiful parts of life is that you get to try new things and experiment with your hobbies, sometimes this experimenting turns into something you never expected it would and sometimes it just flat out fails... We're hoping that our new hobby, raising chickens, doesn't fail because so far we're having a blast being chicken ranchers! And yes, Jared wants to be called a Chicken Rancher, not a farmer... :D it sounds more professional and like we're from some small town in Montana rather than rancher wanna-be's from the city of Sparta, MI!

So as we journey through this super fun new hobby I'll keep you updated on new developments!

Where we've been so far:

• We got 8 Buff Orpington chicks about 2 months ago
  
  
• They lived in a box in my living room under a heating lamp for about a month! :D
  
• My sister in-law, Abby, added 3 chicks to the bunch so Jared and I are foster parents to "Ruby, Clementine, and Dandilion" until they go to the coop. So make that 11 chicks in our house.
  
• The chicks moved out into the garage as soon as the frost was done into a larger "home," an old rusted feed trough, still using the heating lamp in one corner but they're getting to the point where they don't really need it too much anymore.
  
• We started building their coop at Jared's parents house where they will live as soon as they're big enough. We're about a week away from moving them. There is still some work left to do on the coop before that can happen.
  
• The chicks grow inches by day it seems and they have been treated to daily "trips" outside in the back yard to get aquainted with running around in the grass and being out from under the heating lamp, it's also good for their social skills with us as they tend to take better to those who bring them out and play with them!
  

So we await the day that they will be able to make the move to their coop and get settled there where we will visit with them daily and will hopefully produce yummy eggs for us, Abby and Dan, and our parents!

God Bless, Sleep Well!

CW