I’m considering splitting my blog into two parts. One for parenting, family, life learning, etc., and the other for homesteading. People interested in one aren’t necessarily interested in the other. It’s a tough call though, since homesteading is a big part of life learning for us. It is possible to subscribe to just one category and not all of them. Having two separate sections would give me a little more freedom as far as tagging and stuff though. We’ll see. 
My plan with this move has always been to start small and build from there, so as not to overwhelm ourselves. So that’s why we will soon have 17 chickens and I placed an order for thirteen fruit trees, as well as various berry bushes and shrubs. Now we just need to build a coop and some runs, clear the area where the trees are going, and dig some holes. I guess that’s my idea of starting small.
The chicks are doing really well. We had a bit of a scare the other night when a tree knocked out the power to our house for about twelve hours. The room got really chilly and the younger chicks were obviously cold, so we lit a fire and I moved them into the small tote they had been in originally in front of the fire. I checked them a couple of minutes later and the heat was up over 100F and the chicks were now obviously too hot. In order to get the temperature right, we had to keep them in the rabbit hutch with the fire going and a window (not near the coop so no drafts) open, and add more wood to the fire about every 45 minutes (and of course this happened in the evening… it was a long night).
Yesterday was pretty nice out, so we brought the two older chicks outside for a few minutes. They pretty much stood in the tote and stared out at the grass. I even tried bribing them with crickets but they’d only go for them if they were in the tote too. The look on Meredith’s face in the picture above pretty much sums up how thrilled she is with having chickens in the house.
The chicks are really comfortable around Meredith, which is nice. Fiona and her fast movements and loudness don’t seem to both them much either. My favourite is the little Dorking cross. She comes racing to the door when I open it, and is really sweet with us. She’s bossy with the other chicks though. She will grab a cricket right out of the bigger one’s mouths and push past them. Makes me wonder if she’ll end up being the top hen. (And if she ends up being a rooster, maybe she’ll be the one we keep if she’s still this funny and sweet when she’s bigger.) Here’s a little video of her running to the door, grabbing a cricket, and then the rest of the birds coming to see what I’m up to. This was taken yesterday. Today, four of the five birds will come right to the door when I open it.
Having the chicks actually here has really motivated me to look more into some ideas that had previously piqued my interest but I haven’t had much of a chance to look into yet. I’ve been reading about open-air coops, and have that book coming into our library. (Hopefully soon, we need to get our coop built.)
I’ve also been reading about feeding chickens from the land and homemade chicken feed. That topic is pretty confusing, since so many places say commercial feed only, but since that’s what most people say about cat and dog food too (and we raw feed them), I’m skeptical. I’ve found quite a bit of interesting information now about feeding chickens more naturally, and feel we can probably feed them at least mostly off our land in the summer for sure. I’ve found some information on sprouting grains and homemade food that I want to find out more about before winter.
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