Chick Magnet

The coop arrived a few weeks ago and the girls are now used to living outdoors. The first photo shows Andie with her increasingly crazy hair-doo outside of the coop for a little free-ranging. Chickens are omnivores and love a varied diet. By eating grass and plants (along with all kinds of bugs), they get a lot of beta-carotene in their diet. Much more than the mostly corn-fed factory chickens get. The yolks of the chickens who eat their greens are a much deeper, richer yellow than we are used to getting from the grocery stores here. In Europe, the yolks are still quite orange. My girls haven't started producing eggs yet. That should happen sometime around Christmas/The New Year.

The second photo shows my friend Ruth the chick magnet. She came to visit right before we left to visit my dad in France. The girls absolutely adored Ruth and kept trying to eat her shirt. They are 6 weeks old in this photo. At this point they were still making cheep cheep noises.