The coop door was left open the other evening, Sunny and one of the boys disappeared that night.  We are hoping that they eloped and are having a good time in Vegas, but we do have our doubts.  We spent a good chunk of the next day searching for them, but there wasn't a trace.

A week earlier we had e-mailed someone on Craigslist about a posting for Rhode Island Red chickens to replace the pullet who died on-route to our house, she finally responded the day Sunny and the boy disappeared.  Two days later (yesterday) I drove over to choose two pullets.  The sellers had their own mix of critters, at least three golden retrievers, one a puppy who walked between my feet tripping me as we headed to the coop.  Their cat was lazing in the sun and their horse hanging out in the small horse barn.  The coop was tucked under the wide barn overhang and didn't seem substantial enough for raccoon protection.    Inside were  fifteen pullets, one was already named by their seven year old daughter, so she was off limits, but I could have the pick of the rest.  Some were dark red and others more blond/buff.  I chose two chicks with dark feathers and mischievous looks in their eyes.  They both had clearly been well socialized by the children, they settled in my arms within a few seconds. They were officially named as they were chosen, the darker one is Scarlet, who despite her name seems calm and collected and the one that is slightly lighter is Phebe.

Scarlet

Phebe

They bore the ride home well and are now being hazed by the rest of the flock in our coop, luckily they are close in age and size, so they should integrate into the group in a few days.

Now it seems I need to review HTML, because the formatting for the blog is not working the way I want it to.  Please excuse the ill-arranged pictures, but here are portraits of the flock as they look today.  There are no cute fluffy chicks anymore, there are mini-chickens and gawky-ducks who are in large but not all feathered yet.

Lily and a boy

Olive

Amelia

Sebastian

Boy

Kiwi hiding in tall grass

The Golden Eggs

Back to the chickens and ducks...Here is the question--How much does it cost to protect $38 worth of ducks and chickens from raccoons, hawks, and opossums?  

The plans for the coop were free, published with step by step instructions in a library book. 
The first trip to the home improvement big box store cost about $170, and we thought we had pretty much everything for the coop and the run would be inconsequential in comparison, ha!  The lumber we purchased did build the coop, but it seemed that we needed more hardware.  Off to the local hardware store for screws of a different diameter or length, latches for the doors, hardware cloth, chicken wire, poultry staples for attaching chicken wire (really if you go into the hardware section they have a box labelled poultry staples), corner braces, you name it.  Oh, and then exterior paint had to be chosen (by my daughter) and purchased.  The woman mixing the paint exclaimed that the chicks and ducks will think they have been transported to the Caribbean, so be warned.   Next more hardware and then even more hardware.  For the last thirty dollars of hardware they gave us an itty bitty bag and as if to make up for the size of the bag, they threw in a bumper sticker that said "United We Stand".  Sigh.

Poultry Penthouse

The benefits for our several hundred dollar investment we will get some of the yummiest eggs available, I don't want to calculate the value of each eggs the girls produce, it would be laughable (or cry-able).  The girls (and Sebastian) are really pets, so they have their little penthouse, where they slept for the first time last night,  Our garage seems lonely.  No nameless boy chicks scurrying about, no Kiwi and Sunny running up to me to seeking some attention, no ducks soaking up rays from the heat lamp with the, "Hey, what's up!" look as I come down the steps.  It smells better in there already. 

There was a throng of excitement as I opened the coop door to put in breakfast this morning, it was intense.  Today their ramp to the outside will be built and they will be able to enter and leave as they wish.  What is now their prison will really be their penthouse.

So to answer my initial question--I don't want to know and I will not add it up.  I will enjoy the antics of the girls and Sebastian,  and savor the eggs produced.  It will be worth it in the end.

Chick and Duckling Power

Our new chicks and ducklings are set to arrive within the next 72 hours.  Like most other babies, we are expecting a call in the dark of the night announcing their arrival, but this time it will be the US Postal Service asking us to take the little peepers off their hands.  According to the postal worker I spoke to, the sorting room is rather echo-y and it doesn't take long for the peeping to be rather distracting and slightly annoying.  I also have the feeling that they don't want any dying from a chill on their watch.  So, we'll relieve the USPS as soon as we can.  We will all have a set of clothes next to the bed ready for the 4:30 AM call, the camera battery will be charged and the feeders and waterers filled.  We'll click on the heat lamps before we head out so the brooder will be nice and warm for when we return with our box filled will fluffy beings.

My daughter has begun to invite every other child she knows over to the house to cuddle the chicks and duckies, by the time they arrive we will have an entire elementary school and soccer league camping on the lawn.  This brings me back to my last post about lack of community in the suburbs, this will be a "building" experience.  I'll invite parents in, provide snacks and generally be the hostess.  We found pet chickens to have the magnetic power, years ago when our last batch of chickens were little. We often came home to find neighborhood kids in our backyard looking at the pullets, so much so that we had to put a lock on the coop, because they would take them out to play, but forget to put them back and leave them vulnerable to predators.  There was also the issue of flying.  I repeatedly told the kids that the chickens didn't fly, but it seemed that every little boy in the neighborhood had to test that by throwing the chickens high in the air only to see the the panicky  chickies struggle, flap furiously, and plunk back down on the ground, so the coop had to be locked to prevent the girls from suffering from these indignities.

One challenge this time will be  that the company that is sending them will put in extra cockerels to help keep the chicks we ordered warm for their journey, heat packs won't last for three days, but body heat does.  The issue of what to do with the cockerels afterwards has been something I have pondered in my red chair.  What the family has decided is that they will be called broilers and we will do what our grand parents used to do, learn how to eat our own home raised chickens.  These boys will be farm animals, the girls will be pets.  Since we would rather not have cock fights in the back yard and know that our land is abutting other properties whose owners might not appreciate an early wake up call from a rooster, this is the way it has to be.  From my experience living in a community that had roosters years ago, is that after a few weeks, you don't really hear them--they become part of the background, but then never annoyed me in the first place.  I'm afraid that someone in the HOA-type neighborhood that abuts the back of our property with their professionally landscaped lawns, etc. might not take too kindly to farm sounds.

Ducks are new for us.  We've done our reading, spoken to folks with ducks, prepped as best we can, now it is up to trial, error and further research.    A new adventure!!