Sunday, June 6, 2010

Baby Chicks and a Funny Story

This spring we took the plunge and ordered twenty Barred Plymouth Rock chicks. Our friend Alice ordered them for us along with her own, and when they arrived she drove them over to us. The kids had been anticipating the chicks' arrival for weeks, and were very excited when Alice drove up. Alice, being a generous person, had brought us some eggs from her existing flock when she brought the baby chicks. The kids were running to greet her, eager to see the new babies, when Alice stepped out of her truck holding...two cartons of eggs. Their faces wereso funny! Eggs? This was not what they had been expecting! But the carton of chicks was soon to follow, and, much to their relief and excitement, the adventure began.
Here are some of our chicks (the dark ones), plus 25 meat birds from the same order that we were keeping for another neighbor for that first day. The yellow ones are very cute, but we like our Barred Rocks.
Here they are after some time has passed, pretty feathers growing in.

This chick is a good sport.

This is what the chicks looked like yesterday, all ensconced in their new chicken house in the back yard. One chick died. Out of the 19 remaining, six seem to be hens. I was hoping for 10 hens, but we will take what we get. I hope to have one of the Amish families around help me with preparing the cockerels for their future usefulness in a couple of months. We think we would like to keep one rooster, but we will see about that! Any advice, chicken-meisters?

1 comment:

AW said...

CUTE!
Love the chick pictures. They are adorable. :)
I totally recommend keeping a rooster. Pick the one that seems the most scared of you and the kids. A cautious rooster is a good rooster. The friendly ones end up being aggressive once they hit adolescence. Not fun. The skittish scaredy-cat roosters usually turn out to be great.
Having a rooster is loads of fun. They are really good at protecting their hens and are generally all around helpful in maintaining the flock. Plus a rooster gets you more chickens for free. Mine are very, ahem... enthusiastic... about making more chickens. I don't know how broody barred rocks are, but you can't beat having babies around. You might also find a market for barred rock chicks. The fertilized eggs are free and chicks are sold for $2-3 dollars each. Could be a profitable side business. Well, it might cover the costs of feed anyway. :) Email me sometime and I'll share more about my baby making enterprise. I'm on my third hatch for the season and they are selling like crazy.