Chickens out in the run

The orange caution netting is up over the top of the run, and the chickens are out of their coop. Not only are they very happy about it, the Critter is thrilled. Poultry watching seems to be one of his favorite pastimes. Being parents of a very active, very loud child, having something like poultry watching that's a guaranteed hit (temporarily) is a huge boon.

Not that we can see Boris out and about, he's a beautiful rooster. He's also a big boy. As you can see Below the turkeys are very interested in the new arrivals in the area, and have been spending a lot of time hanging around outside the chicken run. We're also seeing some dominance displays between the black chicken and the hens inside the run. As those die down we may be able to roll her in with the chicken flock. We'll see what happens with that over time.

One of the really nice things about having such a mixed flock is very almost silly, and that's that we enjoy looking at a variety of different looking chickens. Right now we have the black hen, three sex linked reds, two white hens (probably leghorn), and the red laced who knows what. With them Boris the Russian Orloff, and we have a really colorful bunch of chickens. The ideal end result of that mixed bag of chickens is some really cute chicks that we can grow out, and select the best survivors of the bunch. If we can we are also going to expand our flock and move them into the larger coop for the winter and the future. We'll see what happens with that. Either way it's nice to have eggs again, even if they are similar in consistency and color to store purchased eggs. The reason they are currently similar to store purchased eggs is the chickens have been exclusively on feed, so they haven't had the chance to get bugs and other stuff to make their eggs that special orange of free range eggs.

As I mentioned we've been enjoying random final days of warm weather, and letting the Critter do so. He got to pick the last of the flowers in the lawn. I'm sure you can guess what happened just after this photo. You got that right if you guessed he ripped the petals off.

The challenge as winter comes isn't that he won't enjoy spending time outside taking away from his entertainment. He will enjoy being outside just fine, he however doesn't enjoy shoes, socks, gloves, or really clothes in general. If he wants to be outside we're going to first get to enjoy the wrestle the struggling toddler while he screams game. Then we'll be able to bring him outside with us to enjoy the animals. He's about to get old enough that we can have him come with us while we are caring for the animals. I'm going to really enjoy being able to do that because it'll both give us more effective hands on time to go around, and get him taking more steps towards being actively involved with the day to day life here. I know, one is young to be thinking about getting him involved, but getting him hands on is actually one of the things I'm most excited about. Especially given his love of the critters around the homestead, and just how much he likes spending time outside.