My love affair with chickens

It can start out slowly, this love. It is a love like no other. An obsession perhaps. Yes, its my chickens. I heard someone say once that having chickens is like collecting Hummel figurines. Once you have a few you want to add one more here and one more there. Oh I need the little one sitting on the toad stool or I need the one holding the flower basket. I don't really know what all the figurines look like. I was never collected them. Oh but how I can imagine. I started out with a Buff Orpington, a Gold Laced Wyandotte, and a Production Red, so I think. Once we lost the Orpington and rehomed the Red I couldn't have my Wyandotte, Merdle all alone. This is where it has begun. So I went to the Urban Farm Store, where I work, and I collected myself a Speckled Sussex, an Orpington and a Brahma. Well you know the tail of the Sussex, remember Opal or shall we call him Opus. He now has a good home. Well we still have the little Orpington and the Brahma. We also now have an Americauna named Xanadoo. She was adopted by the woman that compared chickens to Hummel figurines. She was given to her because she has a cross beak. Well thankfully we now have this delightful chicken. She is quiet and tame and so good natured. She lays blue eggs. We have gotten one from her everyday she has been here. So here is where the collecting comes in. The woman we got Xanadoo from started with three chickens. She now has some odd hundred and seventy five from what I could tell. She had big chickens, small chickens, baby chickens, pullets and everything in between. Well we couldn't contain ourselves we wanted one of each. A Jersey Giant, a Cochin, a Sebright, a Dorking. Oh I could go on. Some people collect figurines. Not this girl. It is chickens all the way for me. Oh yes and my fuschias.