Originally there was just my wife, Lyn, and me. Then we added Stuart, our therapy dog. We quite often provide housing for our friendly neighborhood cat, Guessie. A few years ago we welcomed three chickens – Jackie, Alberta and Betty.
I think both humans and animals were content with the seven of us sharing the property. Everyone got along wonderfully. Lots of our human friends would stop by visit and spend a little time with all of us.
Around the first of February, Lyn, Stuart and I made a trip to a store that sold baby chickens. Lyn had done quite a bit of research and knew exactly what breeds that we wanted to add to our “flock.” One of them is the same breed as Alberta, who died several months ago. The other three are also special in their own ways.
We got the girls home and set them up in our chicken facility. These young birds require quite a bit of warmth so they are living in our heated garage until it gets warmer. It is amazing how quickly these girls are growing.
Our first three chickens were full grown when we got them. They like us and enjoy playing in the yard while we are outside with them, but they don’t like to be petted or picked up. Lyn and I started picking up and playing with two of our baby chickens the first day we had them.
The two that enjoyed our company from the start were named Kathy and Trudy. Kathy is named after my sister and Trudy is named for one of Lyn’s sisters. The two that we needed to work with a bit are Nancy and Alberta. Nancy is the name of Lyn’s other sister and Alberta was the name of Lyn’s mom and the chicken lost to illness.
Things were going really good until last week when Nancy started making some strange sounds. All of a sudden we recognized those sounds as being young rooster crows, hence, Lyn changed her name to Charlie.
Last Friday we returned to the store and explained that one of our chickens started crowing. We were given a different baby chicken of the same breed, but the store wouldn’t take back the rooster. So we are looking for a new home for Charlie.
It occurred to us that the new Nancy would probably need a friend of the same size to grow up with, so we purchased one more young girl of the same breed.
So now there are two humans, a dog, a cat and eight chickens residing at our address. There is never a dull moment around here. When the weather gets warmer we will introduce the young girls to our two older ones.