My chickens

Last winter I decided I was going to take the plunge into urban chickens. Well, ok, technically they're not "urban" when we don't really live in an actual real "city," so to speak, but hey, we have neighbors a rock's throw in either direction. So it totally counts. The biggest hurdle was that the hatchery had a minimum order of 25 chicks, and there was no way in hell I just didn't need that many. Then very early in the spring, my country friend lost most of his 40+ flock to mink and hawks, so I made a deal with him = I'd order 5 Buff Orpington chicks for myself and 20 Dark Cornish for him. The box came May 1st (even though the shipping receipt said February 29th). Check out these teensy peepers:

McMurray Hatchery sent us one extra Cornish and another (Bonus! FREE RARE!!!) chick - it was a Crested Polish. If you look closely, you can see her there near the back. The blonde chicks were mine, the speckly ones are the Cornish. My friend picked his chicks up the next day, and we moved ours to a spare rodent cage, since it was still ridiculously cold outside.

In practically no time, they'd outgrown their little cage (and gotten really ugly).
Pictured: Ugly Dinosaur Chickens Eating the Xbox.

So we moved on to building the coop. I mentioned here before that we intended to use the kids' old clubhouse for a coop, with a few modifications, and that's exactly what we did. With my husband's gracious help (long, LONG story that starts with me saying to him "I don't need your f***ing help and I don't want it!", and ends with me saying, "Please help me for the love of God."), we built our ladies a nice sized coop and a little yard to scratch in. (pics of the coop later).

These pictures were taken this morning, while I fed The Ladies some grapes.

Thankfully, they've feathered out (and aren't so ugly), and their waddles (or as Riley says, "wobbles") are getting darker by the day - a sign of sexual maturity (i.e. EGGS). I'm expecting them to start laying by the middle of July or Early August.