How do I love my Chicken? Let me Count the ways...

I havn't said much about our chickens yet...yes we have 4 chickens. Let me tell you a bit about them... We have two white leghorns about 6 months old and 2 younger arcana chickens maybe 3 or 4 months old. Well, chickens are very strange creatures. Very entertaining to watch-even more entertaining to catch-

Try catching one outside the coop!

-but they are not the kindest of creatures, especially to each other. Due to the age difference of the chickens we have kept the older and younger ones separate until recently. We tried to put the 4 together many weeks ago but the older ones were so mean-pecking, scratching, picking them up by their feathers and dropping them...really. One of the babies seemed especially sensitive to this mistreatment due to the fact it was malled by our neighbor cat in its first week or so of life- and of course this was the chick that the older ones picked on the most. Well, I could not stand the brutality (aka reality) of chickens so we seperated them again.

The 'babies'- don't they look on edge?

Well, last weekend Chris decided it was time again. So now they've been together almost a week, and so far they are all alive. However, I wonder if chickens with starve themselves to death out of fear of older chickens. The younger chick stay up on the roosting stick all day, their only 'safe' place. Despite 100 degree weather I never saw them come down to eat or drink. The one time I did see one down, it was standing next to the water but wouldn't drink out of fear one of the big ones would come near. To help out Chris will go in the coop and make the little ones come down, and then stay in there to chase the big ones away if they come near while they frantically eat and drink as fast as they can. Well, we'll see how the next week goes.

Yes, I make them scrub with soap when they come out.

'Why chickens?' you may ask. Well, because they are so adorable a chicks (but man they poop a lot), they kids would have fun, they are entertaining, and fresh eggs! To date we've gotten 21 good eggs and last week two...uh...well the shell wasn't hard. I'll just say that. (We think a result of the heat and Chris freaking the chickens out with a shovel the day before) When the babies start laying they are supposed to be blue, green or pink eggs! That will be fun! Oh and we knew they would be good fertilizer. (Before the grass totally died due to the lack of rain, we had nice green rectangles all over our yard- wherever the coop had been.)
Well, I'm am sure I have now told you much more than you wanted to know about our chickens. Thanks for hanging in there with me anyway.