Our Humbling, Bumbling Beginning

   On and off we discussed having a few chickens. We live in Maine, in a VERY small town area. We are leasing the land we live on from a relative. God bless him! We live in a mobile home on it complete with our humble additions. (You should hear the neighbors talk!)

 We are by no means rich. But we the desire to improve our health. I should mention we have struggles in this area, health struggles. And for me and one of our son's, eating eggs by themselves was impossible because of the reactions we would later in our digestive system.
 
   One time, back when we lived in Oklahoma, a neighbor gave us some of her extra eggs. Oh my! They were so good! And I didn't react to them like I do the store bought variety. Wow! Thus I never forgot the privilage of having access to home raised chicken eggs.

   Last winter on facebook I came across a facebook friend's picture of her first egg laid by her Cuckoo Marans chicken. As I admired its cute extra dark brown shell with speckles on it, I began to lust again for home raised eggs.
 
   One of my problems though was I was worried about whether our chickens would be mean and ugly to me, and cleaning up after them of course! I thought I was the only one in this marriage that reservations about mean and ugly chickens.

  But more on that later. Anyway, my lust got the better of me. So I told my hubby (who has wanted 4 or 5 chickens for a while) that I was ready to try this.

  I started cruising the hatcheries online first. I had tried to find out where to buy already started chickens locally, but the only ones we saw advertised in the traditional ways, were VERY expensive for just one. We didn't really want to start from baby chicks, but we finally came to the conclusion that for now, that was the most viable option for us.

  I was shocked that the hatcheries have such a high minimum order requirement. Some make you buy 15 chicks (day old), while other hatchery minimums are 25. Oh my! And not only that, we had to order a minimum of five chicks per breed so they would be less likely to get bullied by another breed. (There is hatchery online that I have found that will let you mix and match as you wish, as long as it's twenty five chicks or more for overall total. But that total was a BIT much for a beginner to swallow. So we picked out a hatchery that only made us buy fifteen, thinking that if they were too much we could make that number smaller one way or another after they grew a little.

  I picked my breeds after I did my research on them, knowing what my hubby desires in a chicken, that they lay many, many eggs! Using an online chicken chart that describes most breeds of chickens more thoroughly than the hatcheries themselves helped greatly too.

  Placing that order was fun and yet scary. We chose to give ourselves a delivery date that would allow us to gather the chick supplies, etc. (Did I mention we do everything backwards? Well get used to it, lol!)

 My next post will be about the arrival and have pictures of the chick babies.