Blessings: Ducks and Chickens

A special surprise from Daddy!

baby Gwen

Gwen and Ron

Back in April of 2006, Chad surprised us all with a very suspicious sounding box! It made tiny little chirpy sounds and the boys were thrilled to be given two little chicks. One was Gwen and one was Ron (well he turned out to be Ron after "she" turned into a lovely cockadoodle-dooing rooster!). Our neighbors loved him and 92 year old Evie next door called him "Old Red" and she said hearing him announce the day was the highlight of hers. Here is a pic of our rooster...

Below are Gwen and KP this summer; they roam our 2/3 acre as well as our neighbors eating all the insects they can find! All three neighbors love having the chickens around and of course we share baskets of fresh eggs often.

Well after Ron got aggressive he had to go and we got KP (the black and brown one). The eggs were wonderful and a fun part of the boys' day was collecting them. Then this spring Chad surprised us even further (I don't know how that man out-does himself, but he always finds a way and most often it's not by buying things either!), by bringing home two more chicks and a duck! An adorable chocolate brown duck!!! We were in heaven (see the video at the end of the post!). Anyway, here are lots of pictures and a video of our little friends...

baby Popcorn

Baby Mocha

The boys were so sweet with them. They would turn their hooded sweatshirts around and carry the ducks and chicks in the hood, or like Aidan in this picture, they would keep them cozy in their shirt.

April 07: We kept the ducklings and chicks in the garage in bins with a heat lamp until they were big and strong enough to go outside to join the older chickens (born in May of '06).

Swinging with Popcorn and Pepper

Popcorn let Ethan hold him like this all the time.
Mocha peeking

Sadly our two ducks and one of our chickens are no longer with us. :o( First Popcorn, our white/yellow duck was missing one day and we didn't really know what happened. Then the next day Mocha our chocolate duck was gone. We usually make sure to lock them in the chicken pen at night but didn't do it soon enough I guess because the next day Gwen, our best laying chicken, was gone. Then on Saturday, when we got all that snow, Chad went out early to lock them in (they go in on their own at dusk which is about 4:00 now!) and the door was already shut thankfully, because there were fresh racoon tracks circling the pen. The boys are sad but have been broken in slowly since we had to get rid of the rooster last year after he became aggressive and then in broad daylight our sweet, friendly chicken Ginger was most likely taken by a chicken hawk. So it's sad but we're taking the opportunity to teach the boys that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away and our hearts will choose to say "Blessed be the name of the Lord." We enjoy and care for, the best we can, for the blessings He gives us, and while we're sad, we trust and love Him still. We will be more dilligent to close the pen, but we still feel like they're happier being free range and will continue to let them out.

Here is a short video taken the day after Chad brought home the two new chicks and one duck. They wanted to name them Ashley and Rylee, but Chad thought we needed more pet-like names. So Ashley became Pepper and Rylee became Ginger. I went back the next day and bought Popcorn so Mocha would be an only-duck ;o) The giggly little boy is Sean, a 3 year old who I cared for until we got the twins. He was so upset when Ginger dissapeared and kept asking what happened to her, hoping each time that the answer would change. Sweetheart. Life can be hard to understand sometimes!