Our New Venture

We had a baseball game here last night. N is playing on the local rec team again. He loves it. He has such a great time playing catcher & batting & the whole thing. In fact last night he had a great game. He hit a line drive at the coach (it's a coach-only pitching league) and made it on base that time plus he got on again in his last inning & was eventually batted home. 

Then we were driving home when we came across my MIL walking her dog. We stopped to say hello & she told us that my FIL had a surprise for us. We needed to go right over & see him. 

So we did. He took us down to the basement & this is what we saw....

A few months ago he had mentioned chickens to us. He thought it would be good for the boys. I agreed. Hubby wasn't so on board with the idea. I did a bit of research but since hubby wasn't all that thrilled by it, I let it go for now. However, my FIL walked in to the local Agway store last night after work & saw the chicks there. Apparently he couldn't resist & bought us a "chick six-pack." 

The boys & I are thrilled. Hubby is coming around to the idea.

These chicks are still very young. You can see in this photo that they still have their egg tooth attached. They are of the Barred Rock variety. We have no idea yet whether we have only hens or if there are any roosters in there. Currently there are just six balls of peeping fluff.

Now that I really have chicks here I spent quite a chunk of time last night researching coop designs as well as chicken tractors. I really want a tractor first. 

So what is a chicken tractor? Basically it's a portable chicken coop without a floor. This allows the chickens to peck & scratch at the ground & gobble up all the bugs & such they find there. You move it around every couple of days & they eat the bugs & fertilize your lawn. Neat huh?

I do want a regular coop built for the winter, but for now I'm looking at tractors. Here's one that I thought was pretty neat, easy to build & light enough for me to move easily.

photo taken from The City Chicken chicken tractor gallery

Most of the sites I went to last night either wanted money for their plans (understandable but I'm cheap frugal) so I spent a lot of time just looking at photos. One site did have plans (in terms of a materials list & photos) that I think might work for what we need. Considering we only have six chicks, we certainly don't need anything huge. And believe me, there were some pretty elaborate coops/tractors on the sites I visited.

Officially called "Cluckingham Palace" you can click HERE to check out more details.

One of the best websites I found for information was BackYard Chickens. I'm looking forward to when the chicks are older & bigger & we can start feeding them treats. There is a whole list on that site.