Chickens

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I don't like live chickens.  I can watch them from a distance, but if I am too close to them and they can have access to my body...I get the creeps.  I honestly start to get scared and wigged out.  But...Andy and the girls wanted chickens.  They wanted to raise them and get eggs and eventually eat the chickens.  I agreed with the egg and meat part, but not the "having chickens" part.  We reached an agreement--they would feed and care for the chickens, collect the eggs and all that.  I would wash the eggs and cook everything once it's away from the living chickens. 

(sorry the pics are sideways, and Mikayla is like me and won't touch them)

So we got 6 chickens.  When we got them from our friend, they were only a few days old.  Now they are almost 6 weeks old and much bigger than this.  They look like chickens, not cute, fuzzy chicks.  It was time for a new home.  Our friend Tom, who gave us the chicks, came over and helped us build a coop the other day.  We put up a fence and got it all ready for them, then released them into their enclosure.  It was quite funny.  Their new home is about 20' from our steers' pasture, and the steers are afraid of them!  I can SO relate.   Anyway, we aren't yet sure how many are hens or roosters, but next week we'll get another 6 baby chicks and start the process again.  Once they are big enough, they'll be released with the others and we'll hopefully end up with 6-8 laying hens.  The group we have now should start laying in July.  I admit it's cool to watch them run around in their pen, but other than that, I can't wait until July when I can stop buying eggs!

Still Sick...Plus 1

So in case you're wondering why I fell off the wagon again after proclaiming I wouldn't...I'm still sick.  Yep, it's been over a month.  My sick from before was labelled by the doc as "basically influenza minus the body aches" and since I had a flu shot, they didn't test for it.  Whatever.  It was a different doc than I normally see.  She gave me an inhaler and some cough syrup with codeine.  I was sick for about 3 weeks before it started turning into sinus crap.  After 2 days of sinus pain and pressure, I went in and it was indeed now a sinus infection.  Yuck.  I did what I was told and was finally feeling better at almost the 4 week mark.  Then Mikayla came down with strep throat (as did 4 people in 2 of my daycare families, who shared it with her) and a viral croup-type cough at the same time.  I got the croup type thing only 5 days after starting to feel better.  Mikayla is on day 8 of 10 of her antibiotics, and I'm able to breathe again.  Let's hope this is the END!!!  I'm incredibly sick of being sick.