Chickens??!

Why yes indeed...we have chickens. My roommate Katja and our friend Phillip got this crazy idea about a week ago. They had some extra time last week and started building a coop, I mean a chicken castle, even before we knew for sure we were getting chickens. We are living in a new town home in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, with a lovely yard and perfect back area for chickens. We sent a delightful email to our landlord, stating that we wanted to enhance our environmental consciousness and advocacy for green living...and what more could we want than chickens of course!? We waited a few days, playing phone tag, until we finally had the opportunity to speak with him. He was worried about the smell in general, but since he had 17 chickens and we only have three, we feel we can keep it clean and smell to a limit! He also asked about the neighbors, but we assured him that we just asked and they were dying for us to get zee chickens! And finally he sId the words we were waiting for, "Yes! But I reserve the right to say that we're going to have fried chicken tonight." haha, well lets hope that doesn't happen!

So the next day we put the newly designed and constructed chicken castle into the back patio, and it fits snuggly like it was meant to be! One day later we are buying chickens from a man on craigslist who lived in the middle of nowhere...Orting, Washington that is of course. :) As we were almost there, we turned off into a one lane road, which eventually became unpaved, and all we see is this massive logging truck coming our way! Boy was that a laugh! When we arrived to the farm, there were horses, cows, and chickens galore! We were invited into the chicken run, which by the way had some feces that did NOT belong to chickens, and picked out our favorite chickens. We decided on: black ostroloupe, rhode island red, and a cuckoo maran. They are beautiful, and I hope they love their new home!

Anyways, we have one older chicken who is already laying. We were unsure whether she would lay today because of the move, but viola! After i came home from work i found a lovely light brown egg waiting for me! It wasn't in the laying box, but rather it was sort of in the middle of the coop. Hopefully they will learn to lay in the box, that way the eggs to not get damaged. The egg today had a small puncture at the top, nothing major, i just think one of the chickens may have stepped on it. Either way, it is still exciting to get our first egg! We will post pictures soon!

Cuckoo,
Kayla
Katja
And Phil too