I'm not going to have them near the house (I do use chemicals on the yard, BTW. Ortho Bug-B-Gone and Weed-B-Gone are wonder drugs!). I'm putting them near the corrals by the horses and cattle pens. I'm converting a room off a barn for their coop, and building a fence around it for them to come outside. I hesitate to leave them outside free because of my puppy and my cats. And coyotes. And screech owls. And hawks. But they will have plenty of bugs and other critters they can snack on. And rattlesnacks (I hear chickens are great at killing snakes!). Maybe when the puppy grows up a little and decides chickens are ok I can turn them loose a little bit.

I'm sure I'll be around asking for your advice though! Our 4-H group is really small, like, 10 people, and I'm having a hard time getting the leader to step up and lead (she expects everyone to know what they are doing, even though I have told her countless times that I am clueless. It took two years for her to get us signed up in the program, and that's only because I got so frustrated with her, I went down to the county extension office and did it myself. But I can't complain to them about her because her mother works there! LOL!). But while we are talking about 4-H, I'll share with you all DD9 is doing: vegetable gardening, dairy heifers, poultry, sewing I, baking I, photography, scrapbooking. At the fair if you win sweepstakes (have a lot of points because of all the great different projects you have done), you get an extra $100. And if it is your first year in 4-H, you get an extra $250!