Picking Up Chicks (n=5)

I need to keep this brief, because I still haven't managed to get in some nap-time, and I also need to grade a whole bunch of papers.

But I thought you would all enjoy an update about yesterday's adventures.

scrottie learned on Thursday or Friday that the Phoenix Permaculture Guild's ever-popular Keeping Chickens in Your Backyard class was going to be taught on Saturday morning. So we got up bright and early and rode our bikes over to the class, which was excellent: informative, entertaining, and confidence-boosting. We learned during the course of the class that this would be a good time of year to acquire chicks - usually, they aren't available after October, and getting them now means that they should start to lay shortly after the beginning of the new year.

After the class, we rode down to the Downtown Phoenix Farmer's Market, and somehow or another in the course of walking around the market we hatched (har har) a plan to pay a visit to one of the feed stores I'd heard about. At the market, we happened to run into an acquaintance with one of those insta-internet gadgets, which allowed us to pinpoint the location of the aforementioned feed store. The only hitch was the location: the feed store was on the opposite side of town from where I live. I wasn't completely certain we'd be able to bring chicks back to my house by bicycle, so I called around and secured a backup vehicle, and then we set out.

Altogether, we had to carry the chicks in my bike basket for about 22 miles, taking a couple of breaks along the way to make sure they were okay. They seem pretty happy and settled-in by now. As they continue to grow, we'll have to wrap up our construction work on the coop, and hopefully it will be finished by the time the birds are ready to move outside. In the meantime, the bike room is making a whole lot of peeping noises...

( some photographic evidence of our adventures... )