The Chickens Arrive

Today was mostly a lazy reading day for me, although I had plenty of other things I could have done. But it was also marked by two things that made it special. One was that we went for a walk as a family this morning. It's not that unusual to go for a walk, but we want to do it more regularly since I haven't been exercising much and Terral hasn't been able to run with his back and foot injuries. Anyway, Ethan was being rather cute as usual, and he "rode" his stick horse for quite a ways.

I took a little video of it. The little "Tractor Tractor" song is something Terral found on YouTube last week, and Ethan just loves it. He'll break out in it at random times, and in fact I heard him singing it in his crib just before he went to sleep. It melts my heart when my little guy sings.

The other big event today was that we officially adopted some chickens! Ethan loved watching them, and he kept asking to go see the chickens whenever we came inside. We're all very happy they are here and it seemed like a momentous occasion. We didn't have everything quite as ready as we would have liked, but it's good enough for now. The chickens don't seem to mind. They have quite a bit more space to roam now than they did before, and there are plenty of bugs for them to munch on.

Terral cleared out some of the weeds, but there are still areas of "forest" in their run. I got the idea that they rather liked having someplace to hide and find bugs though.

There is also some garbage left over from the previous owners that we haven't cleaned out yet, and some shingles from when we redid the roof. See, I told you I could have done something besides read.

 This evening Terral and I peaked in at the chickens to make sure they were sleeping in the coop. They were, but none of them made use of the roosting pole because they hadn't had one before. One chicken chose this corner as her bed. . .

 And the others crowded around the doorway. Silly chickens. Still, they seemed comfortable enough.

We're using the cardboard boxes the chickens rode over in as nesting boxes until Terral has a chance to build something more permanent. I don't know if they'll use them or not, but I guess we'll find out soon.  Terral told me that Ethan sure had a lot of fun helping to scatter the wood shavings. He kept saying, "Mess! Mess!" as he threw them. He's really good about helping to clean up, so I think it was a novel thing for him to have permission to make a mess. :)