As you may know, we got some new chickens back in late August.  They turned eighteen weeks old last Friday.  Today, a couple of them laid their first eggs...

I had been predicting right around the New Year... That's when our last batch of Red Stars had started at fifteen weeks old. So, in January, we'll have enough eggs to go around, again.

The new chickens are three weeks old.  Kelly moved them out to the kennel...

Good thing they have their feathers...  We had a light frost this morning...

The was some on the grass. There's an advisory for tonight, too.

Well, the Limelight Hydrangea is just starting to bloom...

That must mean it's time for baby chickens!...

There are a dozen "Cherry Eggers" (the reds) and five "Easter Eggers" (the others).  The Cherry Eggers are a cross betwixt a Rhode Island Red and something else.  The females are red when they hatch, and the males are white, so they can easily sort them.  The Easter Eggers are just some muttly birds that have the Araucana gene in them to lay colored eggs...  Some pale version of green, blue, pink, or purple.  Neither is an official breed according to the American Poultry Association.

Our older birds have pretty much stopped laying, so it's time to replace them.  I tried getting sixth-month-olds, again, but never heard back from the guy we bought from last year.

Winter must be coming.  The chickens brought down a deer to fatten up...

The legs are scattered around the coop.  You can see one in the picture.

Today was chicken day.  We bought 35 little peeping chicks on the first of May.  Five of them died along the way.  We took one out last weekend; it wasn't doing too well.  It did pretty well on the barbecue.  So, we killed, plucked, and cleaned 29 in two-and-a-half hours.  We had four members of the Chicken Coop Co-op helping.  We shrink-wrapped five birds whole for the rotisserie...

(The color in the picture is a little goofy.)  Those averaged out to about seven pounds each.  We had six more that we parted into breasts, legs, wings, and backs and necks for soup.  Two were smaller, but the rest were all about the same size as in the picture.  We'll get about four meals out of each bird, plus soup!

My package of thirty-five baby chicks arrived Wednesday the 1st.  It must be Spring...

Oh, maybe not.  Thursday the 2nd we had a snow storm.  We received 6-8 inches at home, and about 20 up north where I work...

Friday the 3rd, Kelly decided she was going skiing...