The naming of chickens is serious stuff. I mean seriously, names are important. All our pets have names. We have beautiful little chickies happily scratching away in my husbands office until their big enough to go outside, and they need names. I can already tell them apart. There's the little mean one who's got Napoleon's syndrome. There's the big one with streaks on her head thats already getting pecked. Theirs the really good one at balancing who's sorta the clutch clown. My husband and I were passing suggestions around yesterday, after we went to bed. Its really the only time we get to 'talk' and see each other these days. He's at work before I get up, and I'm home after hes good and exhausted and needing to go to bed. I kept setting him off into fits and giggles. "We could name them after stars." Vega, Orion, etc.... and we deemed too pretentious. "We could name them after other animals..." After he decided he wanted to name one Cow and one Chicken after the cartoon. I had suggested Mable and Gertrude as a name for two of them, in which case he laughed at me. We threw around Dog, Skunk, Pig, and discarded it. Our favorite was naming them after music stars... the rooster would be "Prince". Then we could have Shania, Britanny, Madonna, Alanis, Selene, etc... you get the idea. That set him off into more fits and giggles.

We're still working on the names. Hes busy himself working on the Chicken Palace, so it will be ready when the pullets are. We had an old barn that collapsed from all the flooding and snow in the previous years, so my husband is taking all that carefully preserved wood and using it to build this giant 10X16 chicken house. It might be overkill, but these hens will be the most pampered hens on the block.

But one things for certain. Baby chickens are sooo adorable. They are tons of fun and cute to boot. They crawl all over you, and are so incredibly busy that its not even funny. I actually can't wait until we can take them outside (they are a bit smelly) and let them terrorize the neighborhood. We're going to have the Chicken Palace compound, but then they are going to be able to free range all over the yard during the day when folks are home. We just have to make sure no neighbor dogs come over etc.