Saturday, March 20, 2010

Chicks have a field day

The baby chicks are getting older and even have some real feathers. It was 65+ degrees outside on Friday so we decided to introduce the chicks to the great outdoors.



Thursday, March 18, 2010

5 Fuzzy Chicks

It was sad, that there were no longer 13 chirping chicks, only 5. The box looked so empty and lonely since they were still so small compared to the size of the box. The good thing was they could now all eat from our hands at the same time, with-out having to be on top of each other. Also now we could recognize each individually and we named one Sunny. A couple days later when one chick (the Barred Rock) wasn't growing as many feathers as the others we called her Fluffy since she was still a fluff ball, and we still call her that now, but I think it will just be a temporary name.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Fuzzy Chick Continuation

Only the next morning would they eat from our hands and then they would all surround us and ten of them would eat at the same time. Sometimes a chick that was behind the wall of chicks would sort of fly/jump over other chicks and then push them out of the way so that, that chick could eat too. They were so cute just to watch but we had to go to school. It would be awful though, leaving the house there were 13, but when we got back there would only be 5. At noon someone (Mat) was coming to pick up 8, leaving us only 5. Since only my mother would be home we left him a note saying which chicks to take, he can take some feed, and a box to put them in if he didn't have one.
to be continued in a new post soon

Ugly Chickens

The first day it rained a lot the big chickens looked OK, but on the second day they were so ugly I wouldn't even pet them when they crouched down to let me. All the rain had clumped their feathers together and matted them all down. Luckily by the next morning they had dried off, and we had our beautiful, soft, cheerful chickens back.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Fuzzy CHICKS!

Yesterday (Monday) we got 13 chicks from the Anisfeld's, the family the chicks were being mailed to. The chicks were actually delivered on Sunday, and they accidentally got 26 instead of 25. We brought over a box and they sorted out the breeds in order to give us the correct chicks. We got our 5 along with 8 other chicks for another family, who would pick them up from our house the next day. If you count our big chickens too, we had 18 chick/chickens, that a ton!
For
us we got:
-2 Black Austroloups
-1 White Buff Orphington
-1 Barred Rock
-1 more, but I forget what breed it is

For the other family we got:
-4 Rhode Island Reds
-4 Barred Rocks
Anyway, when we got home we rushed around setting up their lights, putting newspaper on the bottom of the box, and giving them food and water. They had to be 90-95 the first week and then lower it by 5 degrees each week. Also we had to give them special "chick gower" for 6-8 weeks, then "chick starter" from 8-20 weeks and then finally feed for (egg) layers. On Sunday we had cut a window in a big box and then covered it with chicken wire, but we had not gotten anything else ready (bad idea). Partly because we only expected to the get chicks on Tuesday.
After they chicks were comfortable we just watched them for a while and then we started holding them. They didn't run away all the time, just a little, and if they did run away a lot we wouldn't pick them up. After you had picked up a chick you then had to put one hand under their feet put them up against your chest and then cover the other side of them so the chick would stay warm. We also tried putting our hand in their box with a little bit of feed on but they wouldn't eat.

to be continued soon

Monday, March 8, 2010

The chicks are here!

13 happy chirping chicks arrived today. Miriam and Ronit are very busy taking care of them. They are cute as can be. See pictures at: picasaweb

From Baby Chicks