Peep! Peep! Peep!

I went by our local IFA Country Store this past week to adopt three new little Rhode Island Red chicks to get my flock numbers back up. It was so fun to hear Bronwyn and Liam's excited squeals when they got home Wednesday afternoon and discovered the little peepers in our makeshift brooder (a big silver bin this time) in the kitchen.

One of the little gals wasn't a hardy, hale chicky though. The next morning we awoke to discover one of the girls (named Lizzie by Bronwyn) was stretched on her side struggling to breathe. By mid-morning she was dead. I revisited IFA to purchase a new chick before the kids got home from school. Liam and Bronwyn moped all afternoon over the loss. Bronwyn found a flat, wide rock and wrote, "Here lies Lizzie, the cutest chick on the planet" to place over a grave she dug in our yard. The new chick is named Linda, and the others are Lily and Lucy.

We have never lost a chick before, so that was a little tough for the kids to understand. But the three we have seem to be thriving.

The three hens we still have are doing well themselves. They have figured out how to repeatedly break out of their run, however. The wires have been picked apart and they keep figuring out how to push open the bottom of the gate. ARGH. I am prophesying a major redesign of my run to keep the scunners in.

Been listening to too much Terry Pratchett on audiobook this week. "Scunners" and "Crivens" in a broad Scottish brogue are sprinkled liberally through my thoughts. It's making reading my scriptures a little interesting, for sure, yeh ken.