Getting ready for chick season
Our set up looks like an advertisement for RentACoop's products. Lol. What can I say, I like them! We're trying out pellet bedding this year, which I heard was less dusty than pine shavings. What I've discovered is that the cup waterer leaks if it's not level to slightly forward. The pellets expand like play washcloths that you get in kid party favors as soon as they get wet and then fall apart. The mountain on the left was created by a relatively small amount of leakage from the waterer cups. Made me think that I only needed 1 package of pet bedding pellets to fill our bathtub. I probably could have wet them a tiny bit to expand to fill the space.
6/3/2022
Just received our shipment from Sky Girl Farm. They were out of the Mosaic chicks, so they substituted 3 Midnight Eggers and 3 Luna Eggers. Very generous of them, though I wish they would have warned me first. I guess with a new baby, maybe they were too frazzled to communicate. Plus, I can't complain too much since we ended up with 13 instead of 10. I anxiously watched the tracking for 2 days until the chicks arrived and picked them up from the post-office before going to work today. Because the building wasn't open to customers yet, they were all looking at me as they loaded up their delivery trucks. A nicely dressed man came out to tell me they don't open until 11am. He was probably a manager sort since almost everyone else was casually dressed. I told him I was there for the chicks, and he was very nice after that.
After getting the chicks home, I quickly deposited them in their new home. I showed a few of them the food and water before rushing off to work. I was only a few minutes late, whew.
Time to name our chicks! It's so hard to tell them apart, and we can't leave the leg bands on because they will quickly become too small and constrict their legs. These are all straight run, and we won't be keeping the roosters. I already suspect Olive is a rooster given the white spot on his head. Chicks are fragile, and some won't make it to adulthood. On the new farm, there are also more predators than our current home in the city. Still, I hope most of these will make it to our team board. They are all just so darn cute! Who can't help falling in love with a chick who sleeps in your hands?
6/6/2022
Chicks grow fast. They are already starting to feather in
6/9/2022
Got an early surprise shipment from Spectrum Poultry! Yay! We ordered 6 Croad Langshans, and 2 Black Copper Marans. We ended up getting 9 chicks, and I'm not totally sure what we got. I think we got 6 Croad Langshans: 2 black & 4 blue, and 3 Black Copper Marans. They sure are cute and work their way into your heart quickly. :)
What a difference a week makes!
These chicks are about a week apart in age. The older chicks are quite a bit bigger and stronger looking, and their wings look 1/2 feathered. The older chicks finally started enjoying mealworms 2 days ago, and I love feeling their little fuzzy bodies as they swarm my hands for mealworm pieces. The new chicks have joined in to check out what the older chicks were going crazy for, but then they walk away. Apparently, their bodies aren't ready yet for mealworms, but they do love crumbles.
I removed the zip tie bands today from our first chicks of the season and added chicken specific stretchy bands. The tiny zip ties they came with were almost too small, and it was a little nerve wracking to remove them. The new bands are much larger, but they will need to be replaced in a few weeks.
Band ID Key:
right leg - Sky Girl Farm order
left leg - Spectrum Poultry order
Olive egger - green
Midnight egger - purple
Luna egger - red
Jennifer named - green
Kayden named - red
Quinn named - orange
Rowan named - purple