Friday, April 9, 2010

Chicks, hens, chickens and chickhens

Last week I took a day off from work and drove out to Kansas to spend some time at Redbud Ranch. Meg needed horse manure for her garden, I wanted to meet the new baby chicks and Rex needed a new tarp put on his trampoline. Meg had an extra tarp so we set out to replace the old one.

And it fit! So now it was time to test it out.



Once we were sure the trampoline worked, Meg went to load up her car with the horse manure and I went to visit the chickens.

There seemed to be one flower pot that was extra special.

All the girls tried it out. One would get pushed out and another would jump in.

Rex examined the other pot full of dirt. Why weren't the chickens trying out this one? No time for answers to that question.

Because those chickens were off and running.

And they weren't coming back.

Sarah loves her chickhens (what she calls them when she calls them) and out of the blue a couple weeks ago, Rex's babysitter brought Sarah 6 new little chicks. Sarah wasn't set up to raise baby chicks with a baby Rex so they were sent over to a neighbor to take care of until they got big enough to join the rest of the hens on Redbud Ranch.

In the neighbor's garage, the neighbor was also raising lots of baby chicks. I was a little confused because apparently some of those chicks were Sarah's too....

And in Sarah's bathroom at Redbud Ranch........wait a minute....even more chicks.

Good grief. I thought she had just six new chicks but she seemed to have six new chicks in at least three separate places. I had to have it explained. Here's what happened...the babysitter gave Sarah six chicks. Sarah loves chickens so much and apparently could not pass up six more chicks at the feed store...heck, it was Easter...and the last group of six were just an experiment to see if some of her chicken eggs were fertile and um...they were. So now...18 more chickens when just a few weeks ago 6 were too much to handle. Ha ha.

I can understand how smitten she is by them. I just love a chicken's urgency about things and how they all travel together, sometimes in single file, to their important areas of daily business. Those chickens are so much fun to watch, as are the teenage ones, and the baby ones. One day soon, I'll be watching chicks and hens and chickens at my ranch of sorts. In the meantime, ceramic ones will have to do...

But I love ceramic chickens too. :-)

5 comments:

Maureen said...

When I lived in the Ozarks, there were dozens of Guinea hens, very funny birds.
PS, I've started a new writing blog, Donegalchronicles.blogspot.com - come check it out.

Maria said...

And they're supposed to be good tick eaters too! Okay, coming over now...

Rural Rambler said...

A very fine fun feathery post! I love chickens, we would have some if we were ever home enough to take care of them :)

Maria said...

Pix-Those girls are always up to something. The frogs are out now and Sarah says it's horrible to watch a chicken racing around with some little kicking legs in the chicken's beak. Whenever one catches a frog, all the chickens have to yell out "Hurray for you!" I guess frog catching is a big sport with those chickens. :-{

Leenie said...

(Chuckling about frog catching chickens) Your tour of the "chicken house" was a hoot. Seems creatures can make their way into our lives without us being aware until it's too late. There were always chickens on the farm when I was a kid. Entertaining and providers of food. Who could ask for more?