Day 15 - Wildflowers and Laying Hens

The wildflowers are beginning to pop up along the roadside and oh, what beautiful scenery for my walk up to the gate each morning with Sadie. William, our cat usually joins us in the evening, but this morning he followed us as well. It's a funny thing to go for a walk with your dog and a fat, black cat tagging along.

The chicks are growing. Long white feathers are replacing the fuzzy yellow fur. It's starting to get hot in the workroom in the daytime so the heatlamps are off and the garage doors are raised ever so slightly to let some fresh air in. I have to keep the cats in the house when I do this and it's a real pain for now, but when the chickens are safely in their chicken tractors on the pasture, they'll have a "real" top and not two old window screens as their ceiling. For now, though, I don't trust William one bit with that flimsy top to their brooder cage.

Today is April Fool's Day and I played a very mean trick on Kent. He knows I have been wanting laying hens so I could have fresh eggs. So I emailed him and told him that the feed store had received baby chicks and ducks and turkeys and rabbits this morning and that I went ahead and paid for 25 laying chicks and would plan to pick them up on Saturday after I came home and cobbled together a hen house in the old tractor barn. Of course this makes no sense since I don't have a way to take care of them once I'm back in Houston and I don't know the first thing about raising laying hens but that sweet man backed me up 100%. His email back said something like "Hey, that's great honey. You know we tend to analyze things too much. Go for it!" I just love this guy. How did I get so lucky??