After we ordered the fifteen chicks, we found out that the chicks couldn't live out in a chicken barn yet, according to a neighbor. (This isn't really true if it isn't midwinter, and if your barn is equipped right. Study up on this. But if you are wise you buy your chicks in the spring so they will be ready when the next winter hits to endure it.)
So we prepared a very large dog cage in our extra bedroom. I kind of wasn't sorry they were in the house, because I could keep an eye on them.
If you have pets, just make sure they can't get into the room the chicks are in. Also if you use a wire kennel, like we did, you will have to attach cardboard (we used zip ties) to the bottom half to keep out floor drafts, and to keep the very small chicks from walking right out between the bars of the cage, lol, like ours did.
When the chicks arrived, one breed (our golden comets) were all marked with a green dye on their heads so we would know the difference between them and the cherry eggers. Our third breed was rather obvious, black australorps. They sent us an 'extra' chick just in case. But all survived the trip. Ours were shipped all the way from Missouri to Maine. I think they really did well, since it wasn't warm outside just yet in New England. We were rather surprised that they kept each other warm enough to survive the trip by mail since the little cheeps get chilled so easy! But here they were, safe and sound peeping like crazy. Of course one should have their home ready with pine shavings on the floor of it, and their heating lamp ready to go. It took us a few hours to figure out how high or low the chicks needed to have their heat lamp (we like the red bulb type so they can still sleep when it's dark).
Here is a picture when they were a few days old. We had paper towels in there in the beginning to easily change out that poop you see in the picture. Later it's not convenient any more because they start scratching it out of the way so they can dig down into the pine shavings for dust baths and sleeping.
I was so enthralled with their cuteness of course it was hard to not handle them so they can adjust, etc.
Use warm water in their waterer so the chicks won't get chilled. Especially at first. We did use the sugar in the water the first eight hours or so. All went well. I sprinkled the chick crumbles on the paper towels the first day as recommended so that they could figure out it was food and start eating. Mine did eat right away. And it wasn't long until they found the water. (Be sure and get a drown proof waterer for your baby chicks!) The next day I put the food in the chick feeder ( the red muli-hole type in the hopes to slow down how much they poop in their food, silly things).
All was well...
Top: One Black Australorp. Middle: Golden Comets with Cherry Eggers. Bottom: All three types.
On and off we discussed having a few chickens. We live in Maine, in a VERY small town area. We are leasing the land we live on from a relative. God bless him! We live in a mobile home on it complete with our humble additions. (You should hear the neighbors talk!)
We are by no means rich. But we the desire to improve our health. I should mention we have struggles in this area, health struggles. And for me and one of our son's, eating eggs by themselves was impossible because of the reactions we would later in our digestive system.
One time, back when we lived in Oklahoma, a neighbor gave us some of her extra eggs. Oh my! They were so good! And I didn't react to them like I do the store bought variety. Wow! Thus I never forgot the privilage of having access to home raised chicken eggs.
Last winter on facebook I came across a facebook friend's picture of her first egg laid by her Cuckoo Marans chicken. As I admired its cute extra dark brown shell with speckles on it, I began to lust again for home raised eggs.
One of my problems though was I was worried about whether our chickens would be mean and ugly to me, and cleaning up after them of course! I thought I was the only one in this marriage that reservations about mean and ugly chickens.
But more on that later. Anyway, my lust got the better of me. So I told my hubby (who has wanted 4 or 5 chickens for a while) that I was ready to try this.
I started cruising the hatcheries online first. I had tried to find out where to buy already started chickens locally, but the only ones we saw advertised in the traditional ways, were VERY expensive for just one. We didn't really want to start from baby chicks, but we finally came to the conclusion that for now, that was the most viable option for us.
I was shocked that the hatcheries have such a high minimum order requirement. Some make you buy 15 chicks (day old), while other hatchery minimums are 25. Oh my! And not only that, we had to order a minimum of five chicks per breed so they would be less likely to get bullied by another breed. (There is hatchery online that I have found that will let you mix and match as you wish, as long as it's twenty five chicks or more for overall total. But that total was a BIT much for a beginner to swallow. So we picked out a hatchery that only made us buy fifteen, thinking that if they were too much we could make that number smaller one way or another after they grew a little.
I picked my breeds after I did my research on them, knowing what my hubby desires in a chicken, that they lay many, many eggs! Using an online chicken chart that describes most breeds of chickens more thoroughly than the hatcheries themselves helped greatly too.
Placing that order was fun and yet scary. We chose to give ourselves a delivery date that would allow us to gather the chick supplies, etc. (Did I mention we do everything backwards? Well get used to it, lol!)
My next post will be about the arrival and have pictures of the chick babies.
