a box of chicks

/ abby hummel

After trying to convince me his little project was for our future children, Aaron finally confessed that his “play house” wasn’t for kids, it was for chickens. And he told me if I ever put a child in this coop, whether it was ours or someone else’s, he would probably call Child Protective Services, but that our future chickens would really like it. Since Aaron had a great experience raising hens when he was a kid and we both harbor secret urban homesteading fantasies, we’ve been talking about chickens every spring for four years. They have always been in the long-term plan, and whenever one of us works on anything in our shed Aaron talks about transforming it into a coop. He realized chickens were legal in our city and when he discovered the massive supply of DIY-coop-building plans from other hippy-ish blogs, there was no turning back. We just happened to go to a farm supply store this weekend and… now the rest is history:  We have six little chickens in our laundry room. (This is the year of MAKING IT HAPPEN, after all.)

I do want to say that I didn’t have animals growing up (except a hamster named Pecan, may she rest in peace), so this is pretty new to me. I have firmly indicated that I am not interested in raising any cloven-hoofed animals, but I could probably be convinced to get a horse if resources allowed and we had kids who would manage the riding and caring. I’m pretty sure no one is reading this for my treatise on hobby farming – you just want pictures of the chicks. I will happily oblige.

1) Chicks at the store. We couldn’t leave them there: chicks 12) Transporting them home in a box:
chicks 23) Aaron carefully observing them. He is such an animal-lover that I can’t believe we haven’t had anything serious until now:
chicks 34) The chicks enjoying their temporary box home in the laundry room:
chicks 4…But, wait! There’s more! I TOOK VIDEOS. Indulge yourself as you see fit.

Aren’t they cute!? I’ve heard they might even stay this way for a few days.

8 thoughts on “a box of chicks”

  1. Kitty is not so sure about Aaron being an animal lover, but she is anxious to come visit after this post!

    • The cat-exclusion issue has been in my mind today too… He told me once when we were dating that I could have a barn cat if we had lots of animals, as long as it didn’t interfere with our chickens. We’ll see! Give kitty a snuggle for me, because I love her even if Aaron doesn’t. 😉

  2. Yes they are darling. What kind of chickens are they? Laying hens that give brown eggs?? Fighting chickens? Have you got baby sitters lined up? We’ll be looking for further chapters. G & G Cheney

    • Oh – it says in the movie, but I didn’t write it out. We have 2 Rhode Island Reds and 4 Barred Rocks. We just found out they were all girls. We thought the Reds were girls and the Barred Rocks were mixed, so now we’re thinking about selling 2 of them since we only want to have four in total. They are all supposed to be good layers with brown eggs, and the neighbors kids have already volunteered to babysit during all the wedding trips this summer!

  4. Your chickens look adorable! We sometimes feed ours hard boiled eggs taken out of the shell and mashed up. We read somewhere that it helps them develop a bit. The markings on your Rhode Island are perfect, I can’t wait to hatch some of my own out this year now!

  6. Pingback: “….without fathom.” | abby hummel

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