Well here it is!  The chickens happy little home is finished!  I just love it and I think they do too!

Kelley did such a nice job, but then I wouldn't expect any different...he doesn't ever do anything half way....or small.

The chickens seemed kind of puzzled at first and didn't want to go inside the little house.  So Kelley would put food in a trail going up the little ramp into the house, and then food inside the house.  After a few days, they started going inside.

I'll have to do a picture of the inside...it's really cute.  4 nests  full of fluff and some long boards for them to roost on. Its pretty delux...with lights and a heater that turns on when it gets down below 40 degrees...thank you Rick!

 It's funny how they just know what to do...every night about sun down, they all march up the little ramp and go inside the house to sleep.  When you peek in the window, they are all lined up in a row on the roost snoozing. 

We were starting to wonder if they were ever going to give us any eggs.  Kelley's friend  who also has chickens told him that if you put some of those plastic colored Easter eggs in their nests, then they will get the idea that they should be laying eggs.  So we put some plastic eggs in their nests. They were getting into the nests...we could tell they had been resting there cause there were feathers and it was all smashed down....but no eggs. 

Then just last week, Kelley went out to check on them and there was an egg down in the chicken run.  It was a cute little brown egg!  HA!

 

 Oh man, we were so excited!  You'd think they had laid a golden egg!  I'm not sure what they were thinking laying it out there in the dirt...but the next day there were two little eggs in the nest!  WooHooo!  They have laid eggs every day since then.  It's so fun to go out there and find them sitting nicely in the fluff.  Like little treasures!   We had scrambled eggs the other day and tonight I made yellow squash fried in eggs.  That's my favorite!  I hope they will all get busy and give us enough eggs so we can share with our good neighbors....they have been so nice to bring over food they were going to throw away for the chickens.  Yesterday, Ken S. brought over about 5 bags of old bread from the wonder bread  store his daughter works at....oh boy the chickens were loving that!

I'm sure glad Kelley would let me get these chickens and so grateful that he would spend his summer building this coop for them to live in.   Hope he knows how much it means to me to be able to re-live this sweet memory of my childhood. It's been pretty awesome to watch it go from a life long dream to the reality of throwing feed out to the clucking hens and finding cute little brown eggs in their nest each day.  Kelley jokes that they are the most expensive eggs ever when he compares them to what he spent on building the coop...but to me they are priceless!