Keeping Chickens Newsletter

As time goes by, we're starting to think this is pretty darn funny. That chicken outsmarted my husband at every turn. My daughter and I named her Lucy the Leghorn and tried coaxing her to eat out of our hands. Pretty soon we had her following us around the yard and even my hubby is beginning to get used to the chicken poop in his garage (not happy about it, but finally understanding that the bird isn't going away.) Every day we got up and first thing we did was check to see if the chicken was still around. I was so worried that Lucy would disappear. We live in northern Minnesota with lots of coyotes, eagles and owls coming through all the time. When Lucy decided to move into my husband's wood shop and loved playing with buttons that would turn on the saws, that was the last straw and my hubby finally gave in, cleaned out our old wood shed and turned it into a chicken coop completely insulated against the -30 temps we have here in winter. Plus he added a chicken run last summer, one that has buried fencing to keep out hungry critters!

Up to this point, we think Lucy was a pretty slick and smart chick because we took her out in the yard every day and she was definitely the queen! But a chicken can only act like a dog for so long. We officially became chicken farmers/lovers when a friend gave me two more birds, Stella and Dixie, so Lucy would understand it was her lot in life to lay eggs and happily scratch all day long. I'm happy to report that Lucy quickly established her kingdom and my three girls got along famously without hardly a peck or a cluck and became henhouse egg-laying buddies!