Chickens

My dad came home with 40-some chicks this past winter.  Those 40 chicks turned into almost as many egg-producing chickens.  The chicks were originally sort of incubated in a small pen in the pool house over the winter.  Now they reside in the former playhouse and shed out in the back of my parents' field.  It's quite the production my dad has going.  The chickens laid their first eggs while we were in Utah.  At first it was just three or four eggs each day.  By the time we left, it was seven or eight or ten!  Today, they lay about 20 eggs per day!  

Each day we were in Utah, Winston would head out to the field with my dad or mom.  They would unlock the coop, make sure the chickens had adequate water, spread some more food, give them any scrap foods we had brought from the house, then look for any eggs.  It took only a day or two and Winston became an egg-collecting natural.  He knew the routine so well that when Dave joined us in Utah about two weeks later, W took Dave out the to coop on his own and showed his daddy how it was done.  When the job in the coop was done, W would carefully bring the "fragile" eggs back to the house, wash them, and put them in the fridge.  

It made Winston so proud to have a job each day and complete it with ease.  He always looked forward to this little bit of time he would have with either or both of my parents.  W really took ownership over his little job.I was so proud to see him thrive doing real work and see the satisfaction he got out of it.  

These pictures remind me of when I had my pet chicken named Blueberry (where did I get that name?!).