Summer Snacks & Summer Chickens

We have been cooking up a storm in the kitchen and on the grill this summer, but here are two of our favorite kids recipes that we had so much fun making.

Peanut Butter Banana Cookies

We mixed 1/2 cup peanut butter and 4 tbsp mashed banana together and spooned out 8 small cookies. If you do this, just know that it is very sticky! I baked ours at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. They were delicious!

Kid Kabobs

I simply set out some skewers and ingredients for the kids to make their own creations! I gave the boys some marshmallows, apple slices, grapes and strawberries. The only rule I gave them was there had to be at least one piece of fruit in between marshmallows. I also gave them some berry Greek yogurt to dip their kabobs into, and they loved it!

Other summer updates around the yard include a new chicken coop for our ladies. We had an incident with our hens as they were free ranging a few months ago, which I know is more so my fault for not being out there with them. I just so happened to look outside as a fox was running around the yard and chasing my sweet Betty White. He got the tail of her and plucked most of her feathers. He cut up her back really badly. Her entire backside was bald and bloody. I felt terrible. As soon as I saw the fox, I let our dog and two roosters out to defend the hens. I had to keep the roosters contained at the time; they were too rough with the hens and constantly coming after me and the kids. I have since rehomed both of the roosters and obtained yet another rooster who is much more tender and tame.

With the help of my dog and the roosters, the fox was scared off, and only Betty White was hurt. However, another one of my hens was quite literally scared to death. She died by what I believe was a heart attack. I kid you not. She had no marks on her, but a little while after the incident, I noticed she had not been moving much. She never would let me hold her. So when I was able to grab her, I knew immediately something was wrong. I checked all over her for any kind of marks, and she was fine. I left her beside some water and food in hopes that she would eat and drink but no such luck. She started to twitch and quickly passed away; it was so quick. You can watch me go over all of this in my Instagram reel that I have attached to this post.

We had already been in the works of starting a new chicken tractor. I decided to just move all of the hens into their new home right then. We hadn't installed the wheels just yet, but I didn't care. They needed to be in a safer coop. The one that we had made initially had been broken into by other animals (unknown), and the automatic door was broken by some type of predator as well. The new chicken tractor has proven to be much safer; however, the plans that my husband went off of did not give a heads up on a few things. For starters, we assumed that when we lifted the chicken tractor, the chickens would just stay inside for some reason. Nope. They immediately got out as soon as we first lifted it. We fixed this problem by attaching some leftover rope netting around the bottom of the chicken tractor. For the most part, this works for us and the chickens.

The next issue we encountered was retracting the wheels once we found a spot to leave the chicken tractor. We have to apply pressure and lift up before being able to release the lock that holds the wheels in place. I have broken two of these. My husband has replaced two. The others have rusted and get stuck... You can see there are issues. So we are considering other ways to be able to move the chicken tractor in an easier way that can last longer. We chose the chicken tractor because we wanted the girls to be able to free range. Clearly, we cannot do that in our location due to the predators. The chicken tractor allows us to give them fresh grass every day within their protected area. This also allows the chickens to help with fertilizing our grass. We have some areas in our yard that struggle to grow grass. After seeing what the yard looked like once we took the hens away from one over-eaten spot, we were amazed. Bright green grass grew back along with tomato plants! This could really help our entire yard (if we can find the right way to do it).

While trying to keep the chickens safe, I have been creating ways to cool down the coop in this Georgia heat. This summer has been kind of crazy here. It's either been extremely hot or tons of nonstop rain. It got so hot that my girls have stopped laying eggs for the time being.

Ways that I have kept our chickens hydrated and cooled off:

1. Bowls of ice: I fill a bowl with ice, and I allow the ice to melt throughout the day. This way, they can have access to cold water for an extended period of time. Sometimes I put fresh fruits in the ice as well. They can have a snack as they drink!

2. Watermelon and other melons: We go through quite a lot of melons in the summer time. Any leftovers and/or rinds go straight to the chickens. They get extra hydration while snacking on these.

3. Electrolytes in the water: I buy little packets of electrolytes at our local feed store to go in their water feeders. If you do this with your chickens, be sure to give them access to plain water as well.