Karen over at Rurality has me so looking forward to getting new chicks. Click here and here to see pictures of her cute, fuzzy little babies.
There’s nothing like picking up that box full of soft peeps, all cheeping away merrily and looking like yellow cotton balls that hop. Everything is nice and warm in the brooder and I could just sit for hours watching them and listening to their constant cheep cheep .
I grew up on a farm but we never had chickens. Matt and I got our first batch last spring. I don’t know why, but I was a little freaked out by them at first. One of the first things you do when you bring them home is take them out of the box one at a time and dip each one’s beak in the water. Matt did all 120 chicks because I just wasn’t ready to touch them yet. It didn’t take long to get over that, though. I never imagined how entertaining chickens would be.
Karen’s so right on about how chickens can’t stand to be left out of something important. The hens will be out in the yard, scratching about for goodies. When one finds a particularly wonderful prize, like a worm or a piece of bread, she’ll attempt to run off and keep the wonderful thing for herself. But the others usually catch sight and a chase ensues. They’ll chase the lucky hen around until she either drops her prize or they manage to pull it from her beak. Then the chase begins anew after the new prizeholder. Last year I saw a hen running about with a mouse in her beak. Don’t know if she caught it or if it was gifted to her by one of the cats, but you would have thought it was gold the way those hens fought over it.
People who have chickens will tell you they’re addicting. I have to agree. If I ever have to sell the farm and move to town I will be taking chickens with me. I believe in most places you can have a couple and call them pets.
Chicken catalogs are even more fun than vegetable catalogs. Go to Murray McMurray Hatchery and get their free catalog. The pictures are heavenly.
I’ve introduced the girls to this chicken addiction, and they’re each getting their own chicks this spring. Madeline will take hers as a 4-H project. She’s getting Partridge Cochins and Golden Polish . Olivia is getting Columbian Wyandottes and Lakenvelders . Both girls are getting Araucanas , which lay “Easter eggs”. All of these chicks will be pullets (females).
I wasn’t going to get any chicks myself. I already have 27 hens and as it is the pigs end up with a lot of eggs we don’t get rid of. But the minimum order is 25 so I decided to add a few roosters to the flock, just because they’re so pretty and I’d like to hear that cock-a-doodle-doo around here. So I’m getting a Rose Combed Brown Leghorn , a Buff Laced Polish , and a Salmon Faverolle .
These 25 chicks will arrive in the mail April 4, and then I’m picking up 100 broiler chicks from Hoovers Hatchery on April 7. Chicks have become one of my favorite rites of spring!
definitely sounds like spring on the farm – i highly doubt thomas would approve of me ordering 25 chicks however. i’ll continue to live vicariously through you. 🙂
I can’t wait to see yours too! You’re getting several kinds that we haven’t had before.Let me know if your Lakenvelders turn out to be flighty… ours are, but we’ve only got 2 so I hate to judge on that small a number. They don’t lay a ton of eggs, but I suspect that one or both is laying outside the coop sometimes.Oh yeah, the big prize during our chickens’ first year turned out to be a snake! They all really wanted it. Just hope they know not to go after the big ones.One of the 2nd group of chicks was a real joker. She loved to grab a dark-colored wood chip and run around and around the pen… everybody would start chasing her. I really think she did it for a game.
If you’d ever like to order less (or mix and match with guineas or what have you) we’ve been liking Ideal…instead of a chick minimum they have a 25 dollar minimum, and if they’re worried about the chicks keeping warm, they throw in males that I guess they would cull anyway. Having a roo or two around is nice….you can get some mean ones, but for the most part we love their perosnalites – and they are good guards for free ranging hens.