The chicks have arrived! They somehow got stuck in the mail so they came a day late, but all were fine in the order. The only problem is that one of my four has a bad left leg. I hope that it will heal. She's limping on it, but is still very resiliant.

The little fuzzballs are amusing. It's hard not to smile and laugh at them. They eat and then fall asleep mid-bite with their head in the food. They flop down and roll over occasionally. They fall asleep standing up, with their head slowly falling, and then wake themselves up again, yawn, and nod off falling asleep again all in a span of 3 seconds. They run and try to flap their fuzzy wings. They fight over prize piece of wood chips.

My Rhode Island Red is being a rascal though. All four chicks were being all lovey-dovey and friendly towards each other all day long (I monitored them for 6 hours) and then I take a 40 minute break to head to Home Depot this evening and when I come back the RIR is suddenly a bully. She runs at the other chicks whenever they are eating or drinking or playing with something. No matter what the others are doing, if they are awake, she wants to get in on the action. So she's constantly running around to the other three being mean. I put her in time out and gave her a couple of taking toos but I don't think she listens. ;o) Hopefully she'll grow out of it. I know that there will always be a pecking order, but I just hope she doesn't turn out too mean (or maybe she is actually a he??).

I did a chick photo shoot but the camera battery died and now I can't find the battery charger or the memory card reader. I know that they must be around here somewhere though....

OH! And Portland was great. 10 days of vacation. I'll have to blog about that later...goodnight all.

Ok. My babies are officially ordered. I'll be getting them the morning of the 30th and I bought:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

-1 Light Brahma
-1 Buff Brahma
-1 Silver Laced Wyandotte
-1 Rhode Island Red

They're coming from Ideal Poultry in Texas, and I'm going to desperately plead with them to send a Golden Laced Wyandotte instead of the Light Brahma (supposedly the Goldens were sold out)....we'll see. I really want a Golden because they originated in Wisconsin and they have wondering coloring to them.

I went to see another coop in Madison yesterday. It was made mostly with found/free objects....that's what I want to do with my coop as much as possible.

In other news this week and last week have been the first official "green" weeks in Madison, as in, the tress finally have leaves! I am glad. I've been waiting for this for forever. It was kind of depressing to be in wonderfully green Portland the second week of March and come back to Madison still all grey and dreary. But now Madison has hit spring/summer weather. I'm loving it. And I love riding my bike to and from work each day, even though the bike path and roads suck. With the warmer weather there are so many more people out and about, and we finally met our next door neighbors. They have two cute girls and seem super nice.

There's a TON of yardwork to do, as the yard is pretty overgrown an hasn't been tended to in a couple of years. So I'm taking photos of many of the plants so my mom can identify the weeds from the good ones for me when I go visit. One thing that I do love is that there are tons of bleeding hearts, which is very cool.

Although I've had much more energy now that the weather is nicer and the world is greener I'm still in a bit of slow motion. I'm hoping this will change. I need to write up a list of summer plans, summer wants/needs/desires. There is so much in life to do. And so much of Madison and Wisconsin to explore.

Ok friends. I am so excited right now. I just found out that I'll be adopting four babies on May 29th!...I'm splitting a mail order with someone so I don't have to try to find home for the extras (they come as day old chicks in groups of 25 or more). I am so excited to raise hens and have fresh eggs, plus to be able to raise them from the fuzzball stage to full adult will be neat. Now I need to get my brooder all set up before our Portland vacation, and start building the backyard henhouse and run (they won't be heading to the henhouse fulltime until they're 8 weeks old so I have some time to figure out the plans). Fun!