Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Chicks, Chicks and More Chicks

This month has been full of chicks.  Seriously!  I suppose I had better start at the beginning.  We have two black Cornish hens.  At the beginning of this month we decided to get some more chickens.  We ordered day-old chicks (all hens) online from Cackle Hatcheries.  They came a couple days later.  We got seventeen:  4 white, 5 yellow, 4 black, and 4 that looked like chipmunks with stripes down their backs!  We made a brooder for them out of a cardboard box, and put them in the basement.  This was on Friday, April 5th.  When we went to the feedlot to buy chick food the man there told us about a farmer who had chicks for sale.  Mamma was interested because he had Arucanas, the kind of chicken that lays blue eggs.  We went to his farm on Monday, and got about ten or eleven more chicks.  These ones were about two weeks old.  He had only two or three Arucanas left, and we got those.  We also got three Rhode Island Reds and about three of a kind called Dominiques.  We also got another that we weren't quite sure what it was, and a Black Moran.  Morans are special because they lay a chocolate brown colored egg, and they have feathers on their legs.  Sadly, this one died the next morning.  We think it had brooder pneumonia.  The farmer also had some older chicks and we got three of those.  They were Speckled Sussex.  We didn't know the sex of the younger ones, but the Speckled Sussex were hens.  We drove home with our new chicks, and now we have about thirty chickens!!  Oh, my!  I don't know what to do!  Actually, it wasn't that hard.  We just put the younger chicks into the brooder with the ones we had ordered, and the three big ones in a small pen outside until we could build a bigger one.  Now we have a big pen, and all the chicks have moved outside.  Things go so fast, but slow at the same time!

Here are some pictures:
One got on top of the feeder!



We think this one is a rooster. Look at his comb! It is different from all the others.  At first people were calling him "Deborah." That doesn't exactly sound like a boy's name, does it?  Bekah and I changed his name to Sam Gamgee.


The Speckled Sussex



The one on the right in both of the pictures above this is Bob.  We think he is a rooster too.

Now we really have a farm!


Thank you so much for taking these pictures, Bekah!
You are a great photographer!

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