Chicken adventures: day 24

I can't believe that they are 24 days old already.  Time flies so fast...  They are sooo fun!  Yesterday was an interesting day.  Something really unfortunate happened and a bunch of cool things happened too.  We'll start  with the good news, the bad news, and then the chicken pictures. :)

The GOOD news:
Yesterday was the first day that I have ever seen lightning bugs/fireflies!  It was so neat and interesting!  Just little tiny flashes of light in the sky and in the field.  Soooooo neat though!  We were doing some building on the coop when I first saw them and hubby was a tad annoyed at how distracted I was.  It was kind of funny!  Super duper neato!!!!

In other neat news, I got my first cordless drill.  I'm really pretty excited about it!  I've been thinking about doing some building of shelves and other things for storage around the house and we thought it would be fitting if I got my own drill.  Hubby's is a bit too much for me to handle, plus if we have two drills going on the coop maybe we can get it done a little bit faster.  I still have to perfect my technique a little bit, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.  We also got the wood for my first set of shelves for the garage.  I'm really excited to see if I can do it!  We desperately need shelves in the garage, we have totes and stuff everywhere, so it would be nice to get things off the floor.  Plus, with the humidity creeping up the floor in the garage sometimes is covered with condensation and I'm just hoping that it isn't ruining things, so I think shelves will make everything look better as well as maybe dry out easier.  So, there will be posts and pictures about it, fyi. :)

The BAD news:
Yesterday was also a really sad day.  Marsha passed away.  She had been acting funny, not walking properly and being really quiet (if that makes sense), and yesterday when we took the chicks to play in the grass she didn't move around much or do much of anything.  We kind of expected it and saw it coming, but its still rather sad.  In memory, here is a picture of her...(she's hidden behind my little golden laced cochin friend, but here is her cute little face)

A few days ago when we were outside (Wednesday June 19), she would keep coming up to me and jumping on my lap and playing with me, but she didn't want me to touch her, so she wanted to make sure it was on her terms.  So that was kind of neat.  Over the last week or two she has really grown on me and I've started to like her a little bit more than before.  We are not quite sure of the reason for her death, but we have a suspicion that it was the buffalo gnat.  It is a little blood sucking gnat that attacks chickens.  We have had swarms of gnats around here the last few weeks, which are really really annoying, and I felt weird about them and didn't think that they seemed like the normal gnat.  Well, we think its this gnat and that that might be what happened.  I guess they get to the skin and suck the blood, can give chickens diseases, can cause shock in chickens and do all sorts of damage.  Marsha is the only one that we have noticed anything in, everyone else seems happy and healthy so far.  We are looking up ways that we can fight the gnats in the future, but I'm not sure what to do!  I kind of think that Marsha was the prime target, because they had easy access to her head and brain through the little pouf on her head, plus she is a rare chick, so maybe she was not quite as hardy as the rest, but we aren't quite sure, its all guesswork anyway.

Now the chicken pictures:
They are starting to roost, which is really neat to see!  :)

Here is a partridge cochin, red cochin and the blue cochin hen (we think).

This one might turn into my new "birdie."  (former birdie was a birchen cochin that got got by the neighbors dog at his parents house, it was so sad, birdie was so friendly and had the cutest little personality ...sigh)  This is the golden laced cochin that usually comes and visits with me whenever I'm in there.  She's so cute!

One of the light blue cochin roosters (maybe).

Buff brahma...(I really think this picture turned out really good!  It might go on the wall!)

Here are a bunch of butts for you... :) Left to right, partridge cochin, buff brahma, brown leghorn, partridge and brown leghorn.  

Little red cochin and the blue cochin hen.

Red cochin hen (This pic might go on the wall too....)

Red sex link...

This picture is so cute, I love it when they look at the camera curiously!  (Golden laced and blue cochin)

Little bit of everyone! :)

And finally...here is a picture of a really pretty strawberry that I picked the other day.  :) It was about the size of a pea, but look how pretty it is! Perfect!  And it was delicious!

xoxo