Farm Animals: Chicks

At the beginning of May (a week before my due date) we got some chicks!  A couple months before that, we had picked out a few breeds that we wanted and ordered them from a hatchery.  We had to wait until they would all be available to hatch and then send to us so we had some time to get ready.  

The day finally came to pick them up from the post office (on Evelyn’s birthday) and I excitedly hurried my 39 week pregnant self to the post office to get them.  I love hearing the chirping in the box as I drove home, excited to open it with the kids and see our new chicks.  

Well… when we opened the box, we discovered that 4 of the 5 chicks weren’t alive.  🙁 Only one had survived the trip.  It looked like the bedding somehow got on top of the chicks and suffocated them in transit.  So sad.  The hatchery refunded our money, which was nice.

So instead of the 5 chicks we were expecting, we had 1.  

We decided to go to the farm store that night and pick out a few more chicks so she wouldn’t have to be all alone.  Luckily there was one farm store (out of 3 or 4 that I called) that still had live chicks in stock.  We ended up getting 3 more that were all about the same age as the one we had (one was a few days older than the rest).

 

We decided to stick with the grandmother names theme, to go along with our chickens.  So this time we named them after our great-grandmothers (well… half of them at least).  Since our chickens are named after our grandmothers, we decided to name the chicks after our grandfather’s mothers: Mary Harper, Hannah Leonia Ashby, Ysabel Mendoza, and Columba Bacodlo Chavez.

Left: Mary the chick. Right: My paternal (then paternal) great-grandmother, Mary.

 

Left: Mary the chick. Right: My maternal (then paternal) great-grandmother, Hannah.

 

Ysabel the chick. Named after Jershon’s paternal (then paternal) great-grandmother (unfortunately we don’t have any photos of her.)

Columba the chick. Named after Jershon’s maternal (then paternal) great-grandmother (unfortunately we don’t have any photos of her.)

 

The chicks lived inside our house (in the schoolroom) for the first couple weeks but then we moved them out to the garage.  

3 weeks old

 

5 weeks old

 

They were getting pretty crowded in the brooder bin that we had for them so last night we decided that it was time to set them up outside.  We sectioned off a part of the chicken run with a temporary fence.  Jershon had built them their own little mini chicken coop out of a bunch of scrap wood.  They will stay in this for the next few weeks until they are big enough to join our other chickens and not get pecked to death.

When Jershon and I were setting everything up last night and getting the chicks all settled in their new place, Aida (the kitten) was in the run with us.   The kittens have never bothered our full grown chickens but we are a little worried that they might try to hunt the chicks since they are so small.  Aida had that hunting look in his eye for a little while… until he got too close to Columba and she pecked him on the nose. Haha. Then he walked away. Hopefully they realize that these chicks are part of our farm… not animals to hunt.

So far, so good though.  The chicks are still alive and the kittens haven’t bothered them yet.

 

It’s fun to see how much the chicks have changed in appearance over the past few weeks.  I’m sure they will continue to change as they get older.  It’s also fun to have the variety and I’m going to love having the different colored eggs. 

Columba. She’s a Silver Laced Wyandotte. She will lay brown eggs

 

Mary. She is an Olive Egger. She will lay olive green eggs.

 

Hannah. She is a Salmon Faverolle. She will lay pinkish brown eggs.

 

Ysabel. She is an Americana. She will lay blue green eggs.

 

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