Chickens… I had them growing up and I loved them. I was so excited to be able to keep them in my room while the coop was being built and they were still too little to be outside. The cutest little yellow fluffs for roommates you’d ever see. The peeps and the heat lamp glow never bothered me. I always loved caring for animals, one of life’s greatest joys for me.

Now I’m an adult with two children and 8 animals… yes. Eight animals. 2 cats ( not including the ferals that live in my back yard, there were 10 of those this year!) a rabbit who has over 1,000 followers on instagram, 2 Guinea pigs, and 3 chickens. Oh and 5 fish if want to include them too!

But we are here to talk about our girls, the ladies as I call them. We have Hennefer, Stevie Chicks, and Chicken Patty LaBelle (my fiancé named her).

It all started when I said I wanted chickens, and to my surprise, I was told yes! Well some friends came over one week and built us a coop out of scrap wood, it is not perfect but it’s great for what it is, 3 nesting boxes a ramp up to them and it’s sturdy! I’d say it’s weather proof but we have just started getting some leaking this year in one spot with all the heavy rains we had this summer.

Well it was beginning of March in 2021 when my mom, my son and I drove to our local D & B Supply in the next town over, and I decided I was getting chicks that day! I didn’t tell my fiancé anything, in fact he was still asleep at home. So we went in, and I got 3 of the cutest little chicks. Two silver laced Wyandotte, and one Columbian Wyandotte.

They put them in a little box, I grabbed a bag of chick feed and we went home. Brought them inside and put them temporarily in a storage tote (image above was their first moments home. I set them on the kitchen table and walked down the hall to hear my fiancé ask what that sound was. I laughed and said

“I don’t know what you mean”

“Oh no, what have you done??”

He later proceeded to tell everyone and even posted on Facebook that he had asked for chicken nuggets and I brought home these instead, haha!

We kept the chicks in the house for a long time until they were too big for the metal dog crate we had on our dryer, and when it was warm enough to be put outside in the coop. The coop was also sitting smack dab in the middle of the back yard where it was built and it sat there allll winter and into the early parts of spring.

I loved having the birds inside, and my son was very interested in watching them. We had them in our living room on the coffee table during the day to sit in front of the windows, and I moved them to the top of our dryer at night where I had the heat lamp hanging from the cabinet door above them.

In early April it was warm enough during the day that I would take them outside to graze around and soak up the sun and they loved it! So did my son!

Our girls were very friendly and sweet because I held them and let them every day, and I still do, I go out every night to put them to bed and I give them all a nice good pet. And most nights ( unless it snows) I have to wrangle them up, grab each one in a specific order and put them in the coop for the night! Haha, it’s quite the sight some nights if you see me chasing the chickens around the picnic table. They fight going to bed worse than my toddler!

Fast forward ahead a little ways and on July 21st, 3 days after we all got Covid, we got our very first egg! It was small but it was so exciting to find, and all I wanted to know was who’s egg it was, because at the time I didn’t realize a very neat trick to knowing who was laying and who wasn’t. And I’ll tell you the secret!

Chickens start laying eggs at around 6 months old, our chickens were just about 5 months for the first egg to arrive. Our ladies are now pretty big (almost two years old, it’s currently December of 2022) the Wyandotte breed is large, they are a laying and meat chicken, but of course I don’t plan on eating them! They are one of the higher egg layers as well, laying around 200 eggs a year. Unless of course your like Patty and you get broody very regularly and then cause the other girls to stop laying… yeah I know your games Patty.

She gets broody alllll the time and sometimes that sets the other two into a weird funk and they will stop laying as well, not to mention when they moult, they will also stop laying. This last time just a few months ago, Patty got broody, they all stopped laying for a month and then the two silvers started moulting, so no eggs for us for two months. So now for the secret I mentioned earlier. If you don’t know, then this will be helpful.

When chickens are of egg layin age, they will squat down when approached. They do it because if it were a rooster approaching then she was getting in position to fertilize her egg.

While I’m no rooster and none of their eggs will be fertilized, it is a great way to tell who is laying and who isn’t, you can then try to figure out why they aren’t laying. (Sickness, moulting, or broody) It’s also 100 times easier to pick up a chicken who squats down in front of you rather than run away too!

In the video above, Patty (who hates being touched) squatted down in front of my, then, two year old son and he laid his head on her. He thought her flaps of protest were funny, although I guarantee she regretted the instinct to squat in front of him!

She gets all kinds of ruffled when you pet her or set her down from being held, she is a prissy lady. I must say, they all have distinct attitudes but Patty is a bit of a drama queen and it can be quite funny!

All three soon started laying, and as you can see in the image above, they are all a bit different in size. Patty has always laid slightly small eggs despite being one of the biggest girls. She also on occasion lays almost white eggs. And those lighter eggs tend to have thinner shells. But I know which eggs were hers to start with because she likes to lay in specific spots. The other two, don’t care where they go.

In fact, the first time Patty got broody, one of them decided to lay behind our old ac unit and I didn’t find them for a week!

I washed them up and did the water test to make sure they were still good, they were! If you don’t know they water test, you place the eggs in water and if they float, they are bad, if they sink, they are good to eat.

Now here recently, amidst the craziness of broody Patty and moulting Hennifer and Stevie, I thought they just weren’t laying, until I found a clutch of about 12 eggs in our front yard (they normally can’t get there), in a flower bed that was over grown. None of those poor eggs were good, what a sad waste that was.

All in all, having chickens is absolutely wonderful, I’ve made some things that have made life easier for me and them, I made a feeder and waterer out of buckets and pvc pipes, and some great little water cups, that way they don’t run out of anything during the night. Now some day I hope to give them a better house but for now everything works great!

If anyone has questions feel free to reach out, I’d love to answer and chat all about raising chickens in your back yard! Have a beautiful day!

~A

We have all experienced pain at some point in life. Whether it was small like getting a paper cut (absolutely horrible, I can’t be alone in thinking that!) or something big like childbirth, and even heartbreak. It’s all pain, and we have all felt it’s grasp, but today I want to tell you about my struggles with chronic pain. And unfortunately I will need to break this post into two or three because talking about my body pains and my migraines (though connected) have stories of their own.

It all started when I was a kid. You know at school when they have nurses come in and they check your spine? Well I don’t know if they do that still, but they used to. Anyway I was told once that I may have scoliosis, then I had someone else tell me that I was just fine. I never got checked again after that, so as far as anyone knew, I didn’t have anything wrong with my spine. Well as the years went by and I got older, I did sports. I played soccer for 8 years (rolled my ankles so much that I started to not notice when I had rolled or sprained them), I tried volleyball, basketball, softball even. But eventually I found what I loved most, running.

I ran cross country all through high school and I loved it, I had great friends that ran and I had an absolutely amazing coach. So I ran cross country during the fall and then during the spring I started to do track (which I did not enjoy) but it kept me in shape in the off season and I had some of the same friends and part of the time, the same coach.

My first year of running though, my hip flexors kept getting pulled. (Very painful) but I kept on because I am very stubborn and wanted to prove that I could do it. And I did. I struggled so much that first year but I got a lot easier pretty quickly. But the pains started to get worse in some places. And more specifically, my right hip. I didn’t say much for a long time, about a year or two, until the pain I was in was physically noticeable. I limped, bad, and would be on the edge of tears after running, and after awhile, all the time. I could hardly walk, or sit, or stand. My friends told me to take it easy but I didn’t want to, I had hoped it would just go away. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And around this time, I started to have migraines, rib discomfort, lower back pain, and on top of it all I get really intense crippling menstrual cramps.

I have two specific injuries that are entire posts in themselves that I will delve into another day as well, but let’s just say I have had my fair share of injuries and mostly muscular/skeletal and joint issues. But for now I’ll just skip around and say I eventually had hip surgery in 2017.

But that’s a story for another time as well. (stay tuned!)

I have gone to physical therapy for a combined total of about 3 years, I’ve seen multiple chiropractors, massage therapists, and doctors. And no one could tell me why I was in so much pain all the time. Blood tests came back fine, (vitamin D deficient, but who isn’t in eastern Oregon) but no issues like rheumatoid, or MS. On paper, I’m perfectly fine and healthy. But let me tell you, I don’t feel like I am. I have had a constant headache, and I mean constant, for over 7 years. I had brain imaging even, and nothing. Why can no one tell me why I hurt? Why do I feel weak and exhausted? Some days are better than others, and some days are worse. Eventually a doctor gave in and scheduled a spine X-ray to check my neck, because did I mention my neck hurts all the time? Well lo-and behold, I have scoliosis! But there’s more, not only do I have scoliosis in my upper back, I have a curve on my lower back as well, but that portion is just one degree short of being considered scoliosis. Back to physical therapy I went, and I was put on multiple muscle relaxers, which definitely helped. I even had steroid injections in my upper back… that wasn’t supposed to hurt but the numbing didn’t work on me well enough, and to no surprise, neither did the steroids. But then baby #2 was on the way, so I stopped taking medications for muscles and migraines.

But after all this, I still have had no relief, and no real answers. Sure I have one diagnosis, but… what good did that do for me? I still hurt. I thought knowing something would help me be able to fix myself, but that’s not the case. I still take too much Tylenol, and spend too much time being in too much pain to do anything. And what no one tells you is that chronic pain that lasts more than a year, (mind you I’m at about 7 years) causes mental changes, it alters the way your brain functions, it causes anxiety and panic attacks out of nowhere. And not to mention how difficult some days are when you are trying to take care of your young children and you feel like you’ve been hit by a freight train.

But having my babies gives me so much more will to keep going, they are the reasons I crawl out of bed, and the reason I don’t just sit and melt into my couch. They give me life when I feel at my lowest, they make me smile when I thought I couldn’t be happy. Family is my medicine, and their love is the best medication I’ve had.

Now I’m still trying my best to figure things out, between the nerve pain, the muscle tightness, and massive head pain, I am striving to do my best, and will figure this out. I won’t give up, I’m too stubborn for that, and I have too much to live for.

To anyone out there with pain, I feel you. You’re not alone, and against all odds, we can be happy, you just need to allow the happiness some room amidst the struggle.

~A