Happy Birthday Girls!

It is hard to believe that this Wednesday will be the girls first birthday! I honestly cant decide what is more worthy of celebration: The three girls reaching their first birthday..........or that we have managed to keep 3 chickens living in our basement for a whole year now. When we look back on the last year it has been a roller coaster of ups and downs and trial and error. Overall, I am glad we decided to embark on this crazy journey of clandestine chicken keeping. While we have had our moments of "why the hell did we ever decide to do this?" (the disastrous first attempt at improvising an indoor coop, for example) the benefit of the chickens has by far outweighed the negatives. The sense of accomplishment of having our own fresh eggs and the amusement of all the girls' antics makes it all worth it.

To celebrate, we had a small birthday dinner with their grandparents. Yes, I realize this is totally insane, but I do have 3 chickens living in my basement here in the 'burbs, after all. I decided to make them a birthday cake but the question was..... what for goodness sake do you make a chicken's birthday cake out of? Well, I started with peanut bird suet and put black sunflower seeds and ham (their latest favorite treat) over the suet. Then I took three worms out of the compost bin and put those on top.

Before my parents came over, I took my old hamster pin and set that up over plastic from my last dry cleaning order. Then I ran down stairs and grabbed each chicken and brought her upstairs and plopped her in the hamster pin. As my parents came in the door, I pulled out the cake and we sang happy birthday. They seemed bewildered but excited by the worms. They stayed in the cage pretty well and also enjoyed a present from grandma and grandpa of freeze dried mealworms. All in all it was a nice evening for both humans and chickens alike. However as Jeff put it as we were cleaning dishes, "You know it stinks that you spent all day preparing that birthday dinner and one of them ended up pooping on you." I guess it is just a part of being a mom.

The birthday cake- I swear they liked it. Just in this pic they are all looking away!

The cake right before the worms went on.

Seriously, one of them had the nerve to poop on me!

Their present from my parents.