We enjoy the urban homesteading stuff so much--beekeeping, canning, gardening at church and such--and have long wanted chickens. So, now that we have our own home and no HOA to send threatening letters when we have a pumpkin on our porch on November 1st, we can finally keep our own chickens! And when Justin decided he wanted to go buy a few for his birthday yesterday, who was I to say no?

We drove out to Elizabeth and hand-picked four adorable chickies. In Denver, we can keep up to eight. We plan to get four more at a later date, but for now we decided four was a good start. There wasn't as good of a selection of breeds either, a tad picked over. I hope the next four can be two Araucanas and two Buff Orpingtons--those are the breeds I want the most.

For now, please meet: Betty the Delaware X Hampshire, Agnes "Aggie" the Cherry Egger, Dorothy the Plymouth Rock, and Mabel the Gold Star {aka, Red Sex Link}.

We're keeping them under the heat lamp for now, and away from the cats, but I couldn't resist a little photo shoot with our little chickies this morning. Please enjoy the peep show.

After all, they're only cute like this for, like, a day and a half; then they hit their awkward, ugly teen years.

Eisley and Violet have been so good with them. I'm very proud. They've been quiet and gentle. We want our chickens to be more pets than livestock, so I hope we can get them used to us and not turn them skittish.

I mean, come on, what is more adorable than a new baby chick? Nothing!
Violet and I both find Big Betty to be our favorite. She's a classic yellow chick, but when she's grown, she'll look like this. Eisley loves the black one, Dorothy, who will also be gorgeous as an adult.

This is, of course, hoping they all turn out to be female. The sexing is hard to do, and they are wrong about 10% of the time. So if any of these HENS turn out to be HENRYS...let's just say, we'll at least have our winner, winner, chicken dinner. No cockerels allowed in the city.

So take a good look with your peepers at our peepers real quick like, they're already getting some of their big girl feathers in.

We have a few weeks to build or buy a chicken coop. I don't know whether the chicken came before the egg, or vice versa, but we certainly put our horse before the cart by buying chicks before the coop. If nothing else, it's good motivation to get building! Post edit: our problem may have just been solved via free shed on Craigslist. Please standby.

Happy springtime from us and our new chickies!

Cheers,
Heather