Chooks

Nearly 18 months ago, after visiting his cousins in Broome and their chickens, Oliver started asking if we could get chickens. Paul had also thrown this idea around from time to time, but I was able to dissuade him. Not Oliver though; he was persistent. Finally, we told him that we'd get chickens once he wasn't wearing nappies any more. And then we stalled him a bit longer by clarifying that this meant at night time too.

But finally, we realised that Ollie wasn't going to forget about the chickens like we hoped and that we were going to have to be true to our word and get ourselves some chickens.

And Paul began the epic chicken coop building project which took way more time and money than we ever imagined. 

A month later the coop and enclosure were built and the only thing left was finding us some chickens. Off to the feed store we went and chose the three most dissimilar looking chooks we could find in hopes that we'd be able to tell them apart.

Who knew that these girls would be so different personality-wise that we needn't have been so concerned:

Stella is the ring-leader. She's always the first out of the coop in the morning and the one who in one short week has learned to escape the enclosure. She's Elliot's chook and the lightest coloured one, and much to his dismay, I call her Stella Bella because I like to annoy him. He likes to yell, "STELLA" just like Stanley from Streetcar Named Desire.

Peta Pan is Ollie's pretty white-tailed girl. He wanted to name her Peter Pan, but we had to make a small adjustment considering she's a girl and all. She's definitely the most skittery one of them all and almost impossible to catch or cuddle. But we aren't giving up. We'll keep on catching her and giving her cuddles until she concedes.

And then there's Jelly Bean, who isn't all that nice to look at with her funny white feathers sticking out around her neck, but is definitely the cuddliest. Technically, she's Paul and my darling, but she likes me best. Once I'm finally able to catch her, she'll quite happily sit on my lap for a good cuddle. Or maybe she's just too scared to move.

We're all so in love with our little girls. Ollie thinks watching them is better than TV, and Elliot, who we usually have to drag out of bed in the morning, hops out of bed now to let the girls out of their box. Even Nacho is starting to get used to them although we suspect his pleasure in seeing them has more to do with a desire to torture them than any sort of affection. 

Now we just have to wait another ten weeks or so until these baby girls start laying us some eggs. And if my calculations are correct and they lay eggs as frequently as we've been told, sometime in September 2016 we might just break even.