The Morris Family Garden

Eleven girls and a rooster, we hope!  They were all supposed to be pullets (females), but usually there is a rooster or two in the bunch.  We'd like one for ambiance.

 Well, there they are.  A new batch of tich-tens living in our basement.  There are three Barred Rocks (the black ones with white stripes), five Rhode Island Reds and four Araucanas - the brownish black, fuzzy-headed ones.  The links go to descriptions on a hatchery website.  Instead of buying the minimum 25 birds and being faced with the prospect of slaughtering or selling the extras, we bought our birds from Holdren's Country Store over in Vinton.  We're very satisfied!

Andy built them a sturdy crate up to the 2015 IBC Building Codes, I'm sure, and they seemed to tolerate it reasonably well.

Junior chicken wrangler in front of the coop in the basement

But we have to keep feeding them, and so they keep growing, and are thus OUTgrowing their box.  So, Andy and Hannah have been working today building an official outside coop in which they will move - hopefully, sooner rather than later.

This is "Mr. Peepy," whom we hope is actually a "Miss Peepy," but she was so vocal in the first couple days, we figured she was a rooster, and thus the name.

I know mamas aren't supposed to have favorites, but, Mr. Peepy the Aracauna has won me over with her green feet.