The chickens have arrived - finally!

My chicken odyssey finally reached a climax: I GOT 8 CHICKENS on Sunday! My friend Lora had ordered 15 chickens and been delivered 30. She gave me eight that she didn't want that are three months old. The four hens will lay eggs in three months.

After talking, reading and researching, and chickening out more than once about getting chickens, I finally decided against getting chicks because of the work involved and fear that some would die on my watch because of negligence.

Some have already died. The night before I picked up the chickens, a fisher cat attacked the cage they were staying in and killed about eight. It was a bloodbath. The chickens stuck their neck outside of the wire cage and the fisher cat chomped it off for sport, according to my friend Ruth, on whose farm the chicks were living.

So I didn't get as many chicks as I anticipated. I'm going to get some more. One of my eight died unexpectedly, inexplicably. I'm not sure of the breeds of my birds, and don't really care. I can tell the roosters. They are amusing, assertive and aggressive. I guess the Y chromosome influences behavior in the animal kingdom. "And the hens love it," someone said.

Our dog Gonzo has taken quite an interest in the birds. She wants to sniff and nip them. That's her watching me with interest on the first day we adopted them .I made it clear to her that they belong to me and she is banished from the chicken coop and yard.

So much has happened since I got fed up waiting and took a hiatus from blogging. We had to build the coop and get permission from the town and decide when and how to get what kind of chickens.

In January when I embarked on this chicken adventure, I didn't expect it to take until July to get them. The un-named guy in Groton said, "Chickens are easier than children and dogs." He was right. They are very low maintenance. The hardest part about the whole advent was building the coop.

I'll catch you up on the coop details later. Gotta go feed the birds now.