Chickens, Chickens, Chickens!

So yesterday I shared our chicken pen and coop with all of you and now for today I'm going to talk about our chickens!! I don't know why, but I was so nervous to get our chickens. They were our first farm animal and I had no idea what to expect. I read so many books, joined a bunch of Facebook groups, and found so many useful blogs before I jumped all in! We heard that most of the time, when you order pullets, you'll almost always end up with a few roosters, and a few that wouldn't make it. I had wanted 6 chickens, so I was settled on getting 8, just in case. When we walked into tractor supply they had a sale. Buy 6, get 6 free. My husband quickly (and surprisingly) Said yes to 12 even before I could ask him, and so we learned that day all about chicken math!  We brought our little chicks home and that started our journey into chicken ownership! They have so much more personality than I had expected! They are so much fun to be around!

Follow along with the photo progression to see how they grew! These are Production Reds! They can be a mix of Rhode Island reds, red sex links and/or New Hampshires breeds! Ours ended up being pretty large birds and they sure lay a lot! We are into December and still average 8-12 eggs a day! I've really had to up my egg recipe skills with this many eggs, and all our friends and family have a steady supply of free farm fresh eggs!

5 day old! So fully, yellow and wide eyed!

6 day old with the cutest little tail feathers. Tell me how adorable those little fluffy chick butts are? I cannot get over how cute this little picture was of the girls! 

6 days old. Are you a rooster or a hen? I don't know, Let me check! LOL!

 13 days old and they have grown so much already!

 2 weeks old. Look at all those feathers!

 3 weeks old. It's crazy how fast they grow is't it?!

 1 month old and they are so silly looking! That awkward teenage stage I called it!

 Here they are at 1.5 months and living in their coop full time! They had gotten too big to stay inside! Look at all these feathers!

Here is a 3 month old girl roosting! 

 Here they are at 4 months old. They love exploring and trying new treats. Here they were checking out a dandelion my daughter picked just for them! 

Here they are at 5 months old. They loved getting to dig in the pen, eat grass and bugs, and practice their flying!

Here is one of our hens at just 7 months old! We let them free range with us sometimes when we are outside with them so they can explore and eat stuff!

In October, a friend of my husband was told he had to re-home his 5 chickens. 3 are Australorps and 2 are Isa Browns! They are a year older than my hens! (Born Spring 2016) The Isa Browns are so small next to our Production reds! The black ones are so shiny and metallic and such gorgeous birds!

Here is one of our girls at 8 months old digging in the fresh straw. One of their favorite things to do!

And here they are now at just 8.5 months old. fThey are surrounding their new heated water bucket filled with fresh warm water. They were really excited and all came right over to check it out! 

And there they all are! Our 17 hens! We ended up with all 12 of our original chickens as hens! No roosters! They are all healthy and thriving! Add in our 5 new ones and we have a large happy flock! I will be sharing some photos of our queen hen, appropriately named Queenie next time, and then onto our sweet goats!

I hope you have enjoyed getting to see our girls growing up! <3 

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

Building our pen and coop!

Yesterday I talked all about our turkeys. Today I'm going to talk about our chickens! First we knew we would need a pen and coop for them to live in, so we had an adorable custom chicken coop made. Michigan can get pretty cold, and I wasn't sure about predators out here, so to be safe I wanted something pretty secure that would lock up nice and tight! My husband, brother and my oldest son built the pen and my daughter and I painted the coop and the boards for the pen! It was a fun group effort to bring this place to life and get it ready for our chicks!
Here is a progression of photos of our pen and coop build! I hope you enjoy!

Before paint!

Building the pen!

Paining boards

Finished pen!

And the coop after paining and adding a flower box! 

I really love the barn red color and all the green grass! Although with 12 chickens the green grass didn't last long :) I hope you enjoyed a tour of our little homestead in the making!



Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead

All about our little Turkey pets!

I told myself when I started this blog that I would be sure to post consistently, but as we grew our little farm this summer, I found myself too busy to do just that! Here I am going to start again and share all these adorable little additions we've made and our new adventures as homesteaders!

First up are our two little Turkeys! We bought a bronze breasted poulet and a white breasted poulet. They are 5.5 months old now and are so big! I'm going to share some photos of how they have grown in the short time we've had them!

Here are the girls at just 2 weeks old! 

Here they are at 6 weeks old! 

Meeting the chickens for the first time. These chickens had no idea just how big these tiny turkeys would get! 

Here they are now, 5.5 months old Our big girls with our whole flock! They are so big!

And lastly, I wanted to share a photo of where I've been finding them roosting to sleep. Inside the barn on the goats pen boards! They sure love it up there! 

Turkeys have been a lot of fun to have around! They love to roost high on the enclosure and sleep in our barn. They get along with all our chickens (We're up to 17 chickens!) and love to groom our Nigerian Dwarf goats! Yes goats! We got 2 sweet twin duelings this August as well and they deserve a post of their own too so they will be up next! 

I hope you have enjoyed hearing about our sweet girls!

Thanks for reading! ~The Vela Homestead