Sunday, May 20, 2012

Oh my goodness...May is flying by! and with each passing week, the chicks ( now full on chickens...some of the more mature ones are even making clucking noises!  ) are just getting bigger and bigger! They are getting pretty feisty too.  When I put my arm in their cage to feed them, they pretty much attack it.  We've started feeding them food too!  Left over dry bread or rice, or vegetables...they love it!  I'm going to have to start me up a "chicken bucket"! 
My sisters are the only one's who would appreciate this...We grew up with a chicken bucket...where we would throw all the table scraps, corn cobs, peelings,  even egg shells.  It would sit under the kitchen sink and would sometimes get pretty smelly and disgusting.  This was long before a garbage disposal was even thought of at our house.  It was either in the chicken bucket or the garbage can.  
Anyway, it would sit under the sink there, and collect anything edible until the next day when daddy would fetch it before he went up to feed the chickens and gather the eggs.  He always did this shortly after he got home from the milk route about 12:00.  Sounds pretty sweet being done with work by noon, but that also required being up and gone long before the sun came up too pick up all the farmers milk around the valley.
Then if you were around, ( which I usually was) you got the treat of accompanying him to the coop to feed the chickens and gather the eggs. When you walked into  the big outdoor part of the coop, the chickens would scatter and flutter around. 
Daddy would check their water feeder and throw them some grain...then he would empty the chicken bucket on the ground,  and they would attack it!  I was scared of them, so I kept my distance. 
Gathering the eggs was the fun part.  I carried a little basket  and went around to each nest.   I thought it was so cool to reach into the straw and usually find a couple of eggs there.  Sometimes they would still be warm. That was a happy memory for me...I can still remember what it smelled like in there...I never thought they were stinky...just smelled like the grain daddy fed them and like birds.




Well we knew we were going to have to get the chickens some larger living quarters and Kelley has not had time to build the coop yet, so yesterday, him and KC made this makeshift pen.
The chickens seemed quite happy as they went exploring and pecking at the dirt.  I think it will do just fine till Kelley gets the real deal built.

1 comment:

Angie said...

I remember the chicken bucket! It was kinda gross sometimes and I can remember the smell too. I loved collecting eggs. good memories