Chickies are here!

Squeee!!!! Aren't they cute! The hatchery shipped them just after midnight on Saturday! I was so worried they wouldn't make it here alive between sitting at the post office for a day and the cold, but everyone made it! I love listening to baby chicks. They instantly cheer up a house.

If you are interested in keeping chickens I highly recommend visiting Backyard Chickens. There is a ton of information there.

My brooder is a wire rabbit cage with cardboard stuck around the sides to keep them from escaping. I use paper grocery bags along the front to keep them from escaping on that side, but allow easy access through the door. Then a towel on the bottom that is changed out once a day when they are small, twice a day as they get bigger. It works for a few weeks and then I have to get out another cage and split them up, but by then I can set the two cages side by side and the heat lamp still gives enough heat to both cages since their needs for external heat source declines with age.

I'm a relaxed chicken keeper. I listen and watch them instead of using a thermometer. If they are chirping a lot they are cold, if they are as far from the light as possible they are too hot. I adjust the lamp accordingly. Instead of the commercial pick me up goop most places sell for new chicks I feed them scrambled eggs.

I had hoped to have a wooden brooder in the barn by this time, but it just didn't happen! Always too much to do. Most of the birds we got are normal, all purpose birds, but Tamarin insisted on getting two breeds.

The naked neck



and polish



She is beyond excited about her strange birds :)