And so it begins

Well, really I suppose it all began years and years ago.  Maybe "And so it begins AGAIN" is more accurate. :) 

I had a flock of chickens when my family lived on a farm near Horton Kansas.  My first 25 chicks arrived on May 6, 1996.  I got 25 day old chicks then from Murray McMurray Hatchery.  And those were a combination of Buff Orpington and Ameracauna.  I loved these two breeds then and I obviously still love them now.

A scrapbook page documenting the arrival of our very first chicks!!!

After lots and lots of online research (I am a HUGE fan of the Chicken Chick!  I have learned so much from her blog and posts.) I talked my husband into building us a little chicken house in our big back yard.  (More on this in a future post.  For now I will just say that my husband doesn't know how to build a "little" anything.  And since he is a "city boy" obviously he loves me enormously to follow me blindly into this backyard chicken adventure) Since we have neighbors and neighborhood dogs our new flock will have to be in a chicken run and not free range.  We also quite often see lots of hawks and many coyotes, so the run is safer.  For my new flock we are taking advantage of  Murray McMurray's started pullets.  It is great to be able to order fewer chickens and wonderful that the chickens are closer to laying age.  Our first pullets arrived on September 12th, 2013.  My 5 Cuckoo Marans Pullets will arrive toward the end of October.  Can you tell I am a huge fan of the beautiful eggs?  And I just love the calm and docile nature of the big beautiful Orpingtons so I had to have a couple of those as well.  

Our first 7 Hummingbird Hollow Pullets

So much has changed since my first chicken house on the farm in Horton 16 years ago. (WOW!  Has it TRULY been 16 years?!!?! Time sure does fly)  Back then I hadn't ever heard of anything like a "Poop Board".  Back then I had the traditional three tiered "ladder" roost which meant you needed to be a champion contortionist to clean under it.  Then I used straw as a coop floor cover and begrudgingly cleaned the coop once a month.  Ugh...it was truly the worst.  Imagine if you can lifting chunks of straw that have been pooped on and matted down onto the floor and pooped on again.  Sand? Aaaaaah, such a DREAM.  Then I had the traditional chicken waterer that got full of gunk and could stink worse than almost any smell I had ever encountered.  Now I have the BriteTap watering system on the front of a 10 gallon cooler.  Absolutely NO stinky water!  I will talk lots more about all of these things in the future and introduce you a bit more to the current Hummingbird Hollow Girls.

I hope you will join me for this amazing adventure.  I already love these girls so much and have tons to tell you.