I grew up with backyard chickens, and with the one notable exception of being attacked by our rooster (short-lived after that!) I really enjoyed them. Backyard chickens are the new cool thing to do so of course I had to join in. I do not let a trend pass me by.
Right now our chickens are living with my parents, but our coop is built (and decorated by Gus!), and as soon as we get their run finished we'll be moving them into our backyard.
The day we brought them home was almost a complete disaster. We bought the chickens from a local guy (Who turned out to be really horrible and was obviously not feeding the chickens because they were pecking each other to death. It was gross. We felt like we rescued those poor chickens.)because we wanted them old enough to live outside with the chickens my mom already had. Gus had specifically chosen a silkie chicken and paid for her (we hope) himself.
We let all the chickens out into the yard except for Gus' silkie (Sapphire is what he's named her) because he wanted to hold her.
You can see that doesn't really look all that healthy here. She's very small, even for a banty chick, and kind of bedraggled instead of fluffy. Well, chickens are a group creature, they don't like to be alone and they get very nervous and scared and tend to just run around freaking out. Kind of like Chicken Little actually!
About one second after I took this picture Sapphire jumped down and dashed through the fence into the neighbors' yard. Gus immediately was hysterical (I couldn't really blame him since he just watched his first pet AND his five dollars disappear through the fence probably never to return).
We had to leave before Sapphire was found, even though we got the neighbor to help us look around. That neighbor has a giant garden and tons of shrubs and one little chicken could really hide in there. I felt so bad for the chicken, who was just freaked about being alone with no other chickens (because they had gone to hide in the shrubs); and I felt bad for Gus. It was a mess.
But yay for chickens really only wanting to be around other chickens because by the end of the day she'd come back!
This picture was taken just six days later, and already she looks so much healthier! I can't wait to bring them over here.
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