Hello everybody!
LORD yes sugarangel! More chickens! LOL Here's how it came about! The story! IK you like stories!
There's this thing about PPL that own chickens and talk chickens to others! Right?
So I get a text from my salon hair gal this evening! Her step daughter is looking to get rid of her chickens, coop, feeders, water containers, etc. for $175.00! She works full time and is now going to college full time. She doesn't have the time to spend with them like she'd like to. Plus she has a 4 yro son.
My husband is out in the shop and I'm in the house. So I start copying the texts and sending them to him. Then I say: "Go get them!" No answer back! Two minutes later he walks in the door and says: "WTF"! ROFL And of course my mind is saying to myself: "Are you CRAZY?" But? As you can see from the pictures? I couldn't turn them down!
They are Heritage Rhode Island Reds! She bought them from a licensed poultry breeder! She paid $10.00 a piece per each one day old chick. So that's $40.00 up front. Then she paid $300.00 for the coop! It's one rooster, 2 hens and four young ones already feathered out! She says they are very friendly!
My hair gal thought of us because we just recently lost our Marans Rooster, Marvin, this past Easter Day weekend! He was 7 yrso! We bought him two hens a year ago because he had outlived all his hens. Now they are w/o a rooster!
We have a chain link dog pen that's a 100 X 100 X 100 X 100 ft. in size. My husbands shop is just inside the dog pen too! We are going to put the coop inside the pen so they can run loose inside it during the day. When everyone learns to get along? We'll let them free range on the entire fenced in two acres! We don't let our Silkies interact with the larger breeds though.
We got our new crew home! My husband immediately turned on the air compressor and grabbed the scraper for the coop! He said: "There's NO WAY I'll let MY kids sleep in that!" Let's just say it hasn't been cleaned in a LONG time.
He's going to power wash it in the daylight and in the sun so it can dry before they go back in it again. I turned the crew loose in a covered pen and gave them a fresh bowl of water along with all sorts of different seeds. They all drank water until I thought they were going to drown. They all got excited over the food.
The food they were being fed was egg laying pellets only. The water container was so thick in sludge it was horrible. When the door was opened on them to take them out to put in the carriers at their other home? There was a swarm of nats and mosquitoes in there with them. ARGH! I'll get them sprayed with my Vanilla spray later today to help keep the nats off them. They are horrible this time of year! They'll kill a chicken QUICK. The chickens will also go insane trying to get away from them.
All in all? They are beautiful chickens. The 4 young ones are 11 wks old. And I do believe one of them just might be a rooster! LOL Time will tell! We are going to need to figure out a way to separate the young ones from their mother too. She was severely pecking them while in the pen. Ugh! The large rooster is very friendly! She was holding him before we put him in his carrier to leave. She started tearing up and I told her: "You know me? From the Salon! You know we take very good care of our chickens? And you know where we live? Come visit them whenever you want to!"
She did her best to care for them with a hectic schedule and a A-hole husband that hated them. They've landed in a wonderful place and will be well cared for now.
I sent her pictures of them today! Told her what all we did for them in their first 24 hours here. Her reply was: "Awesome!" She's TRULY happy we are the ones that got them. Her stepmom had told her many stories about how we treat our chickens/kids here! She didn't know it was US that were coming to get them. When we pulled into the driveway she started smiling, pointed a finger at me and said: "I KNOW YOU!" LOL Half of her heartache dissolved at seeing who was taking her babies!
One thing I left out of my original story was: "She's cleaning house, getting ready to leave her husband!" She's had enough! After spending only 30 minutes around her husband? I can understand WHY! Ugh! I told her: "I truly understand what you're going thru! I sold a little over 50 chickens in 2006 when I was doing the same thing!" She walked over and hugged me. I told her at the end of our texting: "You're babies are in a good home! Now it's your turn to get busy!" She answered: "I know! Right?"
TOD