Chickens

Yes, chickens.  About 2 years ago at stake conference one of the stake presidency, President Jensen, who also happens to be a neighbor, talked about self-reliance.  He talked about the fact that we are so fortunate to have so much land and that we should be using it wisely.  He advocated vegetable gardens and fruit trees and then went on to talk about chickens, goats and cows.  Now, being a city girl I can't imagine ever having a cow (although I would love to have the beef!) and I would have no use for goats as I won't touch goat milk or products made thereof.  However, I was strongly impressed that we should get chickens.  Call it the Spirit speaking to me or call it guilt or whatever, I knew that we should have chickens. 
Fast forward 2 years later and many trips to IFA looking at the little chicks and saying, "We aren't set up to have chickens yet."
Jared and I were at IFA getting seeds and plants for the garden about 6 weeks ago and looked at the chicks again.  I told him that we would NEVER be ready to have chickens, that we would need to get the chickens and then get ready to house them.  While standing there one of the chicks escaped and walked right over to me.  She was a cute little black ball of down and I picked her up and she stole my heart.  Now, this story does take a turn for the worse before it gets better.  We picked out 6 chicks and a 50 lb bag of chick food and surprised Marin at home with her new pets.  They were SO cute in their little cardboard box, and so friendly.

 

It was the day that the second Star Trek movie came out, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and we had to go soon after bringing home the chicks.  Here's where it all goes wrong.  We were concerned about having a hot light in the cardboard box, worried about fire, so we turned off the light and went to the movie.  Yeah, did I mention that we were new to this?  Marin talked about her chicks all the way home and ran upstairs to see them and came back down immediately, devastated.  The chicks were dead, having gotten too cold.  I immediately sent her and Jared back to IFA to buy more and Nicolas and I went to work trying to bring them back to life.  There was one, Loki, who was still moving a little and three, Bellatrix, Dimples and Terra, who were still barely breathing.  Nicolas and I held them in our hands and breathed on them and got out the hair dryer for added heat.  Bellatrix and Dimples responded and we were able to save them but Terra died in my hands.  I hate this part of having pets.  I put Thor, Terra and Chipmunk in a box in the garage for later burial and we kept watch over the three remaining chicks to make sure that they would regain their health.  Unfortunately IFA was closed that evening but at least we had the three chickadoodles left.  I took Marin to IFA on Monday and she picked out three more, Cleopatra, Arrow and Nugget. 

This is at one week old when they were living in my closet and allowed to roam my room for exercise.  Aren't they the cutest little balls of fluff?

This is at three weeks old and they love to come to the garden to help us weed.  They stay right by us and are definitely our little friends, especially loving Marin and Nicolas.

And finally, at six weeks they are definitely taking chicken form and they are getting a little big for their temporary pool house.  As you can see they still love us as they came running over when I took their picture.  Now we are just waiting for Jared to have two minutes to make a chicken coop for them.  Between work and school, he sure doesn't have a lot of time, but he is seeing the need for our poor chickadoodles to have a permanent home.