Ember, the Sixth Chicken

My daughter is obsessed with her chickens. Their names are: Golden Puff aka Goldie, Mint, Speedy, Ella, and Brownie. She comes home every day after school to check on them and look to see if they have laid any eggs. She has even been present at the "birth" of several eggs and enthusiastically shares with me what it looked like and who laid the egg. This does have it's advantages, with five chickens in the pen, it is good to know which two are the ones laying eggs.

Ember also loves to play with the chickens. She takes them out of the pen and carries them around. They have been around her so much that they let her pick them up and carry them around like feathery little chihuahuas. She gives them rides on the wagon and even take them down the slide. She also likes to share her snacks with them. She has even tried to put her doggy leash (the one you put on kids so they don't get lost) on the chickens, and has been very frustrated that she can't get them to be still enough to get it on. I try to explain that they don't like their wings pent up. Which didn't make sense to her because, as she puts it, their wings are cut so they can't use them anyway.

These chickens don't realize how good they got it.

I know if I can't find Ember she is out with the chickens. She has even been known to skinny herself into their coop which is 3 feet off the ground with a 1 foot wooden door flap to finagle herself into. No wonder we have had to do repairs on the coop more than once in the last couple of months.