Welcome. This blog will be about our adventures and experiences living in somewhat rural Colorado (in the mountains about 35 miles southwest of Denver). My nickname is Frog and my husband's is Toad (a story for another day) and we've called our house Toad Hall for a long time.  We have two kids, Omnigeek (14yo boy) and Fairygirl (10yo girl).

If I was on the ball, I would have started this blog at the time chicks were ordered.  But, it is what it is, and I’ll provide some catch up information instead!

For several years I've been interested in providing more for ourselves via gardens. Unfortunately, at 9,000 feet above sea level and with neighbors of elk herds, pocket gophers, rabbits, mule deer and other vegetarians, productive gardening can be tricky. Last year we tried a greenhouse. Our yield was lots of Italian parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, chives and other herbs and a single tomato. This year I'm going to try some indoor gardening and a hanging tomato planter.

Ever since a friend in Denver got chickens a few years ago I've been dying to have some. This year is finally the year. With the addition of chickens to our acreage, we decided that we now live on a "toadstead."

We did our research and chose Australorps, Rhode Island Reds, and Easter Eggers. Chicks were ordered in March for a June 8th hatching. We originally arranged for the chicks to be delivered to a friend in Denver (shorter transit time, fewer chicks can be ordered). When she wasn't going to be available to accept delivery, I hastily arranged for delivery to be to our house and assembled our brooder. We tested a variety of different light positionings and bulb strengths to get the brooder to the 95 degrees F that chicks need for their first week.

June 10, 2009

Our Denver friend, who was in Texas at the time, received a 6am call that the chicks had arrived at our post office. The hatchery managed to change the shipping address but not the contact phone number. She graciously texted me that the chicks had arrived and we excitedly set out for the post office.

We live in a relatively small community, so all we had to do was walk in as say we were there for the chicks. We could hear the post office staff saying "bye bye chickies" as a chirping box was brought to the counter for us. The babies didn't sound quite like the "cheep cheep" I expected. Instead it sounded just like morning birdsong outside our window.

We'd ordered 6 chicks - two of each variety. The two Easter Egger chicks didn't survive the shipping process - we were warned to order more than we wanted in case of this, but it's interesting that both deaths were the same type of chicken.

The four living chicks were tiny balls of noisy fluff the size Fairygirl’s hand. We could easily tell the chicks apart - the two Australorps have different beak coloration and one of the Rhode Island Reds has a little strip on her head. Toad got to name one chick and perversely chose "Bruce" despite the femaleness of all four chicks (we want them for pets and eggs!). Fairygirl named two - Vergussa after one of her first imaginary friends, and Majesta. I named the last chick Mrs. Level.

Check out our gorgeous girls!