Adios.....again

Apparently we aren't very good at having chickens. Or more precisely we aren't very good at picking out chickens. I am currently waiting for a nice lady from Craigslist to come pick up and cart away our 7 week old chicks. The four rhode island reds that we got......roosters. The three white plymouth rocks.......bantams and CANNIBALS! Did you even know that chickens have a tendency towards cannibalism? Well, they do, and some breeds are worse than others, and apparently we won that lottery. I went to check on the chicks 2 nights ago and discovered that my reds were missing almost all of their tails feathers and their poor little butts were bleeding! Dan and I then proceeded to watch all 3 little white ones peck and peck the bloody spots. After some internet research we separated the two breeds and after a lot of discussion I listed the whole lot on Craigslist.....bloody butts and all. Chickens will just keep pecking until they kill their friends if you let them and I'm so not in the position to deal with this issue right now. We weren't really all that interested in having bantams anyway and cannibal bantams?!? Nope.

I have really mixed emotions about getting more chickens right away. I REALLY want chickens. I think they are SO cool and I've had a lot of fun having these chicks.....you know, until the chickens eating chickens incident. But, we recently found out that there is a group fighting our town to make hens legal within the town limits and there is also talk of a rebellion over throwing our current HOA board and info that the current covenant (which outlaws livestock) is actually unlawful because they never got enough resident signatures. So, with all of this in the works, it could be in the very near future that chickens would be fully legal in our neighborhood and it would be so much easier and fun to do this legally. Having to hide our hens won't be an easy thing, and being able to let them free range in the entire yard is much more desirable than confining them to one area. So, I think that I'm going to wait a while to see how things pan out with city......and by wait and see, I really mean that I am going to join the fight and start attending the town council meetings. I'm also going to do whatever I can to get the current HOA board booted......it's currently a bunch of old biddies who don't do anything and this neighborhood has the potential for greatness, it just needs someone younger to breathe new life into it.....and before you go jumping to conclusions, I'm not talking about me. Like I need additional stress in my life. Ha. I think that next time around, I'm going to order my chicks from a hatchery......their sexing percentages are much higher than my skill in picking from a bucket. I'll have to find one or two people to split the order with me because I can't possibly keep 25 chicks (minimum order) so, does anyone wanna split with me? :o)

I'm gonna go now and say goodbye to the chicks. They'll probably just try and attack me which is what they've been doing for the past couple days.....damn roosters, but I have to say adios. At least we have something to show for the past few weeks of being chickens owners......the wood chips and chicken poop in their pen will be great mixed in with our compost. Good ol' nitrogen for our garden. Chicken poop, the gift that keeps on giving!