More Chicks!

So saturday while I was in Salt Lake my dad surprised the kids and brought by two more chicks  these ones are bantam hens.  When full grown they will be about half the size of a normal chicken and they lay smaller eggs.  They are about the size of a robin right now and so they could easily hop right out of my chicken run fence and before people knew it Abbey ( Our retriever) grabbed one in her mouth.  Natalie screamed at her made her drop it and  she put it in the coop. By the time I got home it was still sitting in the coop tramatized.  I was not sure it would snap out of it and make it through the night, but it did!  Yesterday it was happily pecking around with the other chick/chickens.   I was a little frustrated at first when I heard my Dad got me two more chicks for me.  I thought it would be too many, but now I am very happy about it.  These little hens are more like pets!  Because they could fit through the fence I had to wire on a smaller chicken wire around the fence and while I was doing that the  little bantam chick who was NOT tramatized by Abbey followed me everywhere I stood. At one point I was sitting cross legged  tieing wire onto the bottom of the fence and It walked up to me and into my lap and fell asleep.  Then later while Natalie was holding it it jumped up on her shoulder and perched there.  They don't seem to be afraid of people at all and they don't cower when you reach out to pick them up.  So I think they will be a lot of fun.  So that makes 7 chicks/chickens now 2 Road island reds, One white leghorn (I would have had 2, but Abbey killed the other one), 2 Araucanas (My dad brought by these chicks about 2 weeks ago. They are more shy and flighty and will lay pastel eggs) and the 2 Bantams.  I think that is plenty! I hope we are not up to our ears in eggs when they start laying.  We might have to start an eggs saleing business!
Natalie has been teasing me and saying  between the garden and the hens lately I am turning into a farmer lady :-)  I had to smile at that because am so winging it right now! (excuse the pun)

The latest!

So it has been a busy and a little bit of a stressful week! 
I started my 2nd round of HCG after an eight week break. My body stayed at a good stable weight during the break even with an occasional splurge.  I was pretty good about what I ate most of the time though.   I am on my 6th day of injections and the special diet. So far I have lost about 6 1/2 lbs.  It is a sacrafice to get injections and eat so strictly, but it is worth it seeilng the scale numbers go down :-)
Sadly my dog Abbey killed one of my young chickens on Tuesday :-(  I was so mad at that dog! But Have to remember she is a bird dog and bred to retrieve birds.  I secured our new pen better and I doubt there will be anymore problems as long as we keep a better eye on the chickens.  I am excited though because the remaining three started roosting the last few days :-)  Anyone who knows anything about chickens knows what I am talking about :-)  It is so cute seeing them up on the dowl looking so sleepy and comfortable perched up there. 
The other exciting thing this week is I planted my kiddie pool gardens and my asparagus roots that I planted a few weeks ago are starting grow asparagus spears!  I love asparagus and can't wait to have some fresh spears to eat :-)
The bad news this week was our family van would not start Wednesday even after jumping it so we thought that we were in huge trouble because we have to have that car and our bank account had no money to fix it, but the good news was we found out that it was just a bad battery so the cost was minimal compared to what we imagined it would be.  So we felt blessed.
Amanda had her first baby sitting job on Friday and did a great job!  She was soooo excited about it and was very prepared with lots of little activities for the kids she baby sat.
Natalie had her first "Boy/Girl" Birthday party.  I can't believe how grown up she is now!
Joseph and Mike had a blast at the Fathers and Sons campout.  Joseph looks forward to that every year :-)

Saturday I made my own compost bin out of a 55 gallon water drum I already had.  I am excited to see if it will work!  I put fruit and veggie scraps that I was already collecting, chicken doo doo, and Mike cut the grass yesterday so we put some grass clippings in there too. I got the idea for a compost bin from our Relief Society gardening class  on Tues.  It was a great class that I learned a lot from!
So those are this weeks  highlights.  I know I am missing a bunch of stuff, but oh well I don't want to turn this into a novel so adios!

Chicken coop

We moved our big chicks outside.  They pretty much look like smallish chickens now.  We borrowed a chicken hutch from my Dad and because of the dog and cats we needed to make a chicken run too.  We used an old Dog run that was left by the previous owners of our house.  We still need to put a top on, but for now they don't want to leave the hutch anyway so that will need to be added on a different weekend.  Mike and I were pretty proud of ourselves and how it turned out :-)  I forgot to mention that My Dad brought me two more chicks the other day so that makes 6 hens now.  They are small and fluffy so I still have them in the garage with the heat lamp until they get their feathers in.  I hope this new adventure is a positive one. 

There are two red hens in there too, but they blen in with the red wood :-)