New plants, chickens happy, first mow

 New crocus bulbs are coming up.  Its so cool when all the efforts of fall bulb planting come to life.  Its encouraging and gives me motivation to work outside when its yucky and rainy.

We had 4 days in a row of NO RAIN... yippeeee.  So we got a lot done.

We got our first lawn mow of the year done.  Which is a big deal because there is always so much debris around after a winter here.  We have lots of tree branches that fall and little branches that get caught up in the law tractor.  Somehow rocks just seem to magically appear also.  So I collected two bins (newspaper bins) and one garbage can full so my husband could mow.

We also were able to get out with our chiken tractor more.  HWich makes the chickens happy.  So happy we had our first 3 egg day... where all three of our adults hcickens layed their eggs.

We also put together a composter we got from Costo... and it took about 5 hours to put it together and it almost killed us.  I have no picture of it... because it was so awful.  But the intent is to compost teh chicken manure and other things from the property.  We will see if it works!

Everyone needs a pink flamingo in their yard right???

Chick video

Here is a video of our little chicks... We gave them a small amount of lettuce and they are so cute running around chasing each other to try and snatch some lettuce for the others.

Here are our two latest chicks.  I love this picture because its like the older chicks (older by a whole 1 and 2 weeks) are scared and backed into a corner by these two small yellow puff ball chicks.  So the darker orange of the new one is a Buff Orpington and the lighter one is a Light Brahma (which will have white feathers on its feet).    So we have a total of 9 chicks now: 2 Ameraucana, 2 Black Copper Marans, 2 Blue Marans, 1 Splash Maran (the white one), 1 Buff Orpinton and 1 Light Brahma.  The Marans were a straight run so its possible we will get 2 or 3 roosters from the 5 Marans.  We have a friend who will take them.

Our first egg breakfast with eggs from our own chickens!

Our first 5 eggs... cleaned and ready to eat.  Considering the amount of money we have invested in chickens right now (coop, chickens, food, bedding, etc..) these eggs cost about $200 each.  That's okay... the cost will go down over time.  And they are fun.  The adults are getting to know us better... they want out to free range in the yard but we haven't had great weather for that yet.  But someday.  And I will take pictures when we do.

Our first breakfast with our own eggs.  Look how bright and deep orange the yolk is.  Tasted good too.

Chicken coop is done and we have 3 chickens!

We finally got the chicken coop done and painted and even decorated.  Looks cool I think!  It ended up being more complicated than we thought... I guess things usually are.  we havent really had many problems.  We have been trying to decide if we should stay with straw on the ground or go with wood flakes. 
    So we did get three adult chickens from our friend (the one who built the coop!).  Here is an iphone picture of them and our dog.  Our dog isn't quite sure what to make of them yet.  She did bark and growl a little at the begging.  Then a few days ago she chased a local cat away form them and had a great time running around the yard chasing this cat...and now she seems to be a little protective of the chickens.  We haven't let them out yet to free range... but I plan to.  And eventually I will try to incorporate the dog and chickens.

I do have to say I found the Backyard Chicken website to be fantastic and helpful (http://www.backyardchickens.com/).