happy girls

The girls enjoying a little freedom while I clean out their coop.
The area behind them is our "nursery"...for baby plants, sick plants
or new plants waiting to be planted.

The chicken coop got a good cleaning Saturday morning (finally...yes, I know...I've been threatening to do it for weeks.) and the girls are so happy...calmly clucking away, scratching in the new pine shavings and straw, and admiring their new digs.

Our lavender is growing like mad so I trimmed a bit, chopped it up and put it in the chicken coop. Supposedly it helps with the flies...but if nothing else, the coop smells divine. (Which isn't always the case, lemme tell ya.)

I noticed a few of the eggs are weak at the tips and are cracking at the slightest touch. So I crushed up all of the dried egg shells I'd been saving and sprinkled them around the coop...something for the girls to scratch and peck at that will, hopefully, strengthen the egg shells.

When Libby died I was ready to get rid of the girls for good. I have to admit, I'm not good at the ugly parts of animal ownership. When she died I felt awful that I couldn't help her, heal her, save her. I figured it would be best to just give them away so I wouldn't have to deal with that again. As you can see, I haven't gotten rid of them.

Sickness isn't the only negative when keeping chickens, I also don't like all of the flies that they attract. But that is remedied easy enough by just keeping their coop tidy and cleaning it on a more regular basis, especially in summer. With diligence on my part, flies shouldn't be (that big of) an issue.

And I mean, really...how can I resist the beauty of walking out to my own backyard to gather fresh, organic, brown eggs from my very own chickens?