The Webster Family: Chicken Update

I know that everyone is dying for an update about our new pets. I kind of left a cliff hanger in my last post about the chickens. Will the 2-year old kill them? Will the cat eat them for dinner?

Luckily, our chickens seem to be doing fine. Logan quickly lost interest with them and pretty much leaves them alone. Even when he does decide to bother them, he just tries to pet one of their heads. They seem to always know when he’s coming and instantly freeze up. As for the cat, I’ve trained our kids pretty well to keep the doors closed. It will hopefully keep happening when the chickens are moved outside this summer. I knew I had done a good job of training the kids when I went outside the other day and Logan yelled at the door. “Mom, come in, come in. Cat eat chickens dinner.” I wonder what will happen when he puts together that the chicken we eat for dinner is another form of the chickens we have as pets. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

It’s been really educational having the chickens, too. Did you know that chicken manure is considered one of the most amazing fertilizers? Some people keep chickens just for that reason. Thankfully, despite the learning curve, they’ve been pretty easy to take care of.

Oh…and we found out what kind of chickens they are. We got in touch with the egg supplier and they said they are a Bantam blend. They’re not purebred chickens. They are small chickens and will lay small eggs (hopefully they’ll start laying when they’re around 4 months old). They are still pretty small, but I’m amazed at how quickly they’ve grown and changed. I would estimate that they’ve at least quadrupled in size.

I’ve been taking pictures every week. Want to see the progress?

Here they are at one week:

Two weeks:

Three weeks:

Four weeks:

And finally, five weeks. We took them outside for the first time today.

They’re still pretty little. And they still cheep, so technically they’re still chicks. But they can jump pretty well, now. It won’t be long before we have no choice but to move them outside.

They look so completely different than they did as chicks.

Here’s Sonic: