Chicken Adventures Update

 Why chickens you ask? I know some of you (including my own father-love you dad!) think we have lost our minds. The truth is we have wanted chickens since we moved to Italy. Having chicken is just a part of life there. We wanted chickens for several reasons. We wanted to teach our children some responsibility in taking care of and being responsible for another living thing. They have learned so much already and I have already caught Nolan explaining/teaching one of his uncles something that he didn't know about chickens. 4Her in our future? Maybe...We wanted to teach them where their food comes from in a world of processed, unnatural food. You can't get any closer to the natural state than taking your eggs out of your own back yard and then preparing them(same goes with the garden). The eggs that come from pastured chickens are so much more nutritious for you as you can see from this article from Mother Earth News, because they come from happy chickens. Happy chickens produce healthier eggs.
Also, I am pretty disgusted at the way chickens are raised and treated in a typical industrial chicken farm. They are either piled on top of each other with no space to move or just caged up all day. Some life.  There are all kinds of pictures out there, I will not post any but if you are interested enough you can find them.

  Why is this ok? I don't know but I don't like it so we are choosing another option. I know not all of you have this option to raise your own chickens of course. You can fine great options though at your local farmers market, or check craigslist listing for local farm fresh eggs, health food stores, neighbors, friends, coworkers. Look our for signs on the side of the road, for people who offer fresh local eggs. We are currently getting our eggs from a coworker of Matt 's who raises his own chickens. Ask around, I am sure you can find another alternative if you are interested. In the meantime, here are the latest happening around this chicken house.

The chickens, now 7 weeks old getting some supervised outside time. They love it. I told Matt last night, why have cable? All we have to do is come outside and watch the chickens. They are very entertaining. Really! This is what they used to do in the days before cable(I am very convinced of this). 

Two hens trying to decide if the want to come outside or not, the chicken on the left will lay blue/green eggs. The one on the right is called a Dark Brahma. It will look similar this hen, also they have feathered shanks(feet and legs) which you can see in the pictures.

Golden Laced Polish Chicken, you cannot look at this chicken without smiling :-)

In or out? We cannot decide..

On the edge of the woods, they love being outside. We cannot wait until we finally get the run up so they can scratch around like this all day.