Backyard Farmgals

My boys are so proud.  Proud as peacocks, to be exact!  This week was fair week and my two farmhands took their 5 best chickens to put on display in hopes of ribbons and chicken champion glory.  Imagine their surprise when on Wednesday morning, they stepped into the chicken house to see a large, green, chicken-topped trophy staring back at them. I think the plastic rifle really makes the picture here.  Will insisted on bringing it, and posing with it.  Boys!?!??  I sometimes wonder what planet they are really from!   Reserve Champion Junior...  *gasp* Which is a really fluffy way of saying second place.  Jane, the Silver Laced Wyandotte, was beaming as only a Reserve Champion Junior chicken can!  First place was taken by a gorgeous black and gray rooster with feathered feet.  I think that his feet won over the judges, that, or he was bribing them with chicken feed! Jane.  Doesn't she look like a Reserv...

"Egg" - one of Will's girls! I had to share this with you all.  My six-year-old son's chickens are pretty fabulous.  He wanted to enter them in the County Fair this year, he is so proud of his girls.  These are chickens that he has raised himself since they were chicks.  He has fed them, watered them, drug them around the backyard, given them bike rides and wagon rides; he absolutely adores his girls.  These are the same girls that ate my peas this spring and forced me to replant in between thoughts of chicken soup and fried chicken. My chicken whisperer We call Will (my son) our "chicken whisperer".  He can calm any chicken, pick up the buff orpington rooster that is as big as he is, and all of the chickens follow him.  They love him.  We have a blind chicken named Helen that Will has taken great care with.  He holds her and checks on her.  He is always teaching all of his little friends how to hold chickens and is often ram...