City yard, barn yard

Our city yard is both play yard and barn yard at the same time. This tends to startle all the neighbors that walk by the front and do hilarious double takes when they glance over and see chickens and ducks hanging out by the fence (much to our amusement - and theirs!). But walking by the back door and seeing a chicken up on the steps looking inside the house and pecking at the door is pretty normal to us by now. (And Lyla was having a dramatic moment, don't judge my pantless child).

What's not normal for us is dealing with life and death on a daily basis. Last week we lost six of our ducklings. We have theories of why six of them suddenly died, but no real explanation. We made some quick changes to their food and water and thankfully, the rest are doing well now, leaving us with a total of seventeen ducklings. Even though the plan is for them to end up on our dinner table anyway, it just doesn't feel quite the same when we are burying them as babies. It's just plain SAD.

Thankfully, there is always something to be excited about, even with the sadness of the ducklings passing. The first thing is that Lexi can't count past four, so after the first one died, she never knew about the other five. The second thing is that several of our chickens are now laying daily, giving us three eggs a day right now. Lexi is OBSESSED with checking the nest boxes all day long and lets out squeals and screams of delight whenever she retrieves one from the nest. 

Our chickens have also become much "friendlier" since they have reached maturity and we can catch and hold them fairly easily now. Lexi takes advantage of this daily, and makes sure to croon original songs and kiss them while burying her face in their soft feathers whenever possible. ;-)