Got chicks???

Meet the new little ladies in our house:  Helen, Stella, Susan, Jackie, Penelope, and Nicholai.  Don't ask me who is who...I can't tell them apart except for the little dark one who's giving us a good view of her hind end in this picture.  That's Jackie.

Aren't they just the cutest little balls of fluff you've ever seen?  Three are Rhode Island Reds, and the other three are a breed that my husband can't seem to remember the name of.  He was the one who took the kids to the feed store last weekend while I was away at a doll show, and like a typical man, the details just aren't that important to him.  Hey, they're chickens, right?  That's the important thing.  And hopefully, they're all of the female variety, because we can't have any roosters living in suburbia.

Right now, they're temporarily residing in a Rubbermaid box with a heat lamp out in our garage.  But I figure they'll outgrow that pretty quickly, so we are in the process of converting our unused side yard into a chicken pen.  There's lots of grass and weeds and blackberry vines for them to munch on, so I think they'll be pretty happy.  And happy chickens lay eggs.  Which is the goal.

I was just informed by my 4 year old that this chick is Stella.  Hmmm.  Not sure how she can be so sure, but I'll take her word for it.  And just in case you're curious about the poor, little chick named "Nicholai", well, that's what happens when you let your teenage son name one.  He thought it was pretty amusing to name a chick a cross between his middle name, Nicholas, and the disease, E coli.  Just watch, this one WILL turn out to be a rooster, and then what ever will we do?