That'll teach Chad to Go Out of Town...

I purchased 20 chickens. While Chad was out of town. HA! I'm still laughing about it. Actually, I've been wanting chickens for a long time, and I've talked to Chad about it dozens of times. I've also talked about it with Megan a lot of times, because, she's also wanted chickens. When my sister got chickens, I contracted a serious case of chicken envy. I know, I'm 30 years old, but I wanted to say, (good naturedly, of course), "no fair! I've wanted chickens longer than you, and you got them first!" The fates aligned when I ran into Megan at Costco later that day. "Lisa got chickens! Can you believe it?!" I said to her. We decided we would go over to the feed store just to look and get more info. We were there for over an hour and half. We went in thinking, okay, how about we get 3 each, for a total of 6. The ladies at D & D feed convinced us we needed at least 10, probably more like 15. We also talked to a lovely lady named Shirley at the feed store, who when we said we were thinking about getting chickens, she said, "oh yes! you MUST get chickens!" Armed with her endorsement, I tried to call Chad. I texted, and called, and couldn't get through. Megan and I wandered to the chicken water bottles, then chicken feeders, the heat lamps,and then to the galvanized tubs of adorable baby chicks, and back again. We made that circuit around and around several times, and then we said, "okay, get a box." I knew that it might come as a shock to Chad, who knew I was going to get the info, but didn't know I would take the plunge without his okay. I was pretty sure he would approve, so I threw caution to the wind and said, "if Chad and I get divorced over chickens, we obviously have problems." I texted him with message: it cost us this much money, we decided to go for it. I was relieved to get a text back that said, "cool." I was more than a little surprised at his non-reaction, but didn't want to spook it so I didn't say anything else. And we loaded up our box! With 15 baby chicks, 6 different breeds. The next day, we said, "what's going to be that much different from taking care of 15 and taking care of 20?" So we went back and got 5 more. They are so cute! Fluffy and small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Novice chicken farmers, here we are, the day we brought our babies home.

Later on that night, I talked to Chad about how unexpected HIS day had turned out to be. I texted him a quick picture of the babies, and said something like, "and me too, because of these!" There was a silence and then... "you mean you got them????" I guess the fact that we had actually purchased and brought home 20 chicks got lost in translation. I was scared to respond but I timidly answered, yes, and, "I thought you were okay with it?" more of a question. I didn't realize I was holding my breath until I let it out when he said, easily, "I am, I was just surprised." And thus began our foray into the chicken business. We don't really know what we're doing. We don't really know what we were thinking. But, we have them. And that will teach Chad to go out of town! He actually likes them and has been working with the other husbands on building them a lovely coop. The coop we wanted to give the chickens and the one they wanted to build were wildly dissimilar, but we managed to compromise and have a very nice coop that is almost finished. The chickens will start laying around September and they will lay an egg a day and they will be beautiful colors like blue, and sea foam green and dark chocolate brown. We are so excited. post script: This was a month ago. Since then, sadly, we've lost two of them. The rest are happy and healthy and a month old! We've been taking them on chicken field trips out to a fenced off area so they can be in a place other than my garage. They had to be moved within a week from the blue bucket they were in, to a large plastic wading pool. Then that had to be modified when I went out one morning and three had staged a break out and were wandering around my garage. After the second time that happened, we circled the perimeter of the pool with chicken wire. Just this week, they were breaking out of the chicken wire, those crazy wannabe flyers. So we made a quick temporary wall on the unfinished side of the coop and every day I move the chickens into the coop where they stay all day, and then I move them back to the garage at night- until the coop is completely finished, I don't think they're safe out there at night, with the coyotes, foxes, and raccoons we've seen roaming the premises of our yard. We didn't name any of them when we started, except for one, a tiny fluffy yellow one we named Daisy, and we learned our lesson why we shouldn't name them when Daisy died. Now that they're older and less in danger of dying due to runty-ness, and showing off their personalities more, we've given several of them names. A lot of celebrities: a mean one we named Lindsay Lohan, an exotic looking one we named Angelina Jolie, a redhead we named Lucy. We have one named Eliza R. Snow and one named Provident Living. We have some that are just for fun: a little one we named McNugget and another we named Colonel Sanders. The biggest one, a great big barred rock, we named Big Mama. I hate to say it, but I'm pretty attached to every single one of them. We're looking forward to all the omelets we will soon be enjoying. Stay tuned. I promise you, it'll almost be like watching a sitcom.