By Amy
We are on a chicken raising frenzy in the Fish family. At this point I believe four of the nine adult children are raising hens.
Nine years ago when we moved to the Upper Midwest, my husband Greg insisted that we buy a house in one of two cities where we could have chickens. Time passed and he never really showed too much interest in building a coop and getting going until this past spring when he decided it was time. He loved having animals at home a a kid and thought it would be a great way to show our kids more responsibility and work ethic. Greg hunted down a 20-year-old kid from church who is incredibly handy. He asked him to draw some sketches and Jonathan came through with 4 different possibilities. Greg told him to build the one that was most appealing to him and a month later we had an amazing coop and 16 chickens.
I grew up in a very suburban town south of Chicago. I had never even seen a mouse except at the pet store or a cow except on the side of the road. When those chicks arrived on June 30th I had no idea what I had gotten into. They stayed in my laundry room for a month and my kids named each one. We have Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons and Americaunas. We have given away 7 since, but we are left with 9 crazy hens who will start laying eggs any day. We cannot wait! Will the first be brown or green?
By Marci
Without meaning to, we also started the chicken coop project within weeks of Amy and Greg. Moving around with the military, we've never had a place where we could raise chickens until now. But what finally sent me over the edge was our tick population, some of which carry Lyme disease. Greg and I also grew up with guinea fowl, and their specialty is eating ticks. So, we decided to get both chickens and guineas.
Guineas are the cutest as babies but have quite the ugly heads and obnoxious sounds as adults.
We have 16 hens of the following varieties: Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rocks, and Americaunas. Well, we thought "hens" until Dancey turned out to be a rooster.
Michael did some research on coops and solicited the expert help of Paul, Dave, Kurt, Candace and Big D. I was also sucked into design and hard labor, even though I was less-than-stellar help at 8 months pregnant. A few weeks and many popsicles later, we had a mostly completed and very large coop! We will report someday in the future that we have electricity and a paint job.
Our chickens are four months old today, so we hope to see eggs anytime now!
