Backyard Chickens

Being that we're new parents and have so much free time on our hands (listen for the sarcasm in my words) we decided we needed a new hobby! After lots of research we decided urban chickens were the hobby for us.
We searched craigslist and found a great deal on a coop that came with a four month old hand reared hen, a feeder, waterer, and bag of chicken feed. After a long drive out to Queen Creek, we made the purchase and brought home everything we needed to get started including "Penny", our first hen.

We quickly changed Penny's name to Clucky since my good friend is going to deliver a little girl named Penny next month and didn't want to compete ; ) You know how protective mom's are with their baby's names!

Knowing that hens get lonely, the day after we settled Clucky in, Josh set out to get her some friends. He came home with 3 hens about the same age as Clucky.

It took a few days for the gals to figure out their pecking order but now we have a happy flock! It's been almost 3 weeks and we're finally reaping some of the rewards. We've found 4 eggs in the last 5 days. So one of our four hens is laying and the others are likely to start laying soon.

The top egg is from our flock, the middle a store bought egg, the bottom a farm fresh egg from Bliss FarmsWe're loving our new hobby. Fresh eggs taste amazing! The yolks have a brighter orange color

and much more flavor (our egg is the one on top). Myles and I enjoy spending time outside watching "Chicken Television". The hens are funny to watch and really have a ton of personality. Even Fluffy enjoys watching them although I'm sure she'd much rather be playing with them!
The other day while watching Chicken TV, Myles and I caught our egg layer in action and we learned that Dolly is responsible for our yummy fresh eggs! Thanks Dolly!

Hopefully the other gals will be laying soon. Generally chickens lay 1 egg every 24-28 hours so we should be eating lots of omelets soon!