Our pets give us companianship and when they provide us food they are more beneficial.
Some country creature got the last three of our Rhode Island Red chickens. We are reduced to buying eggs at the grocery store or from a neighboring farm. Such good brown eggs aith orangey yellow yolks and strong whites.
Our chickens were aging and had slowed their laying so we plan to start a new batch this spring and the time is coming up. Little yellow fluff balls will be cheeping away in a cardboard box with a heat lamp in my laundry room.
When they get big enough and can with stand the weather we’ll put them out in the coop and hope for the best. Anything can get them hawks, coons, coyotes, foxes. We have a couple of eagles on our land. I don’t know if they’d eat a chicken. We put side walls on the coop and a heat lamp for cold nights. The chickens pile uptogether on their roost and stay warm.
My ten hens were named “S” names: Shirley, Sandra, Sybil, Sadie, Sonya, Silvia, Sophia, Scalett, Sarah, and Savannah But when they were grown they all looked identical and I couldn’t tell them apart.
We liked to sit in the shade by the coop and watch them eat and play and associate. Chickens are fun to watch. To water them we used a water bucket with nipples. They nipped at those and got a drink. I didn’t like to refill the bucket because I seemed to smack my forehead all too often on the door brace.
They loved watermelon and would clean one down to a thin green peel. I was disappointed to find chickens can be picky eaters and won’t eat potato or banana peels or brocoli, etc. I thought they’d love anything green!
In the summer big black King snakes liked to slither into the coop and steal eggs. That’s when I stopped gathering eggs. Ron would take the snake out into a tub and relocate it at the creek. I was afraid to open a nesting box and encounter another snake.
Now as spring looms near I am looking forward to getting some layers in the coop again. What part of spring do you look forward to? What are you thankful for?
He will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.
Psalm 91:4
What’s Good About Home! 
They were just King snakes! I’d rather have them around than Copperhead snakes any day! I’ll let ya try again later this year……You can do it!
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I love the warmer weather and the way the early blooms peek up through the cold ground. Those eggs are gold these days. Glad you’re starting another batch of laying hens.
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