My chicks came in!

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I went cruising for chicks at the P.O. early this morning and came home with a passle of blondes, redheads, and brunettes - 31 of them to be exact. My order from Murray McMurray came in!

I was up till nine o'clock last night getting that brooder finished and naturally this morning the Weather Service predicted the temperature to go to freezing tonight after nearly two weeks of seventies and eighties. I had to stop at the farm supply on the way home and get hotter bulbs to be sure the temperature would stay where it should in my unheated workshop.

The chicks are: 10 Barred Rocks 5 New Hampshire Reds 5 Buff Orpingtons 5 Black New Jersey Giants 5 Silver Laced Wyandottes.

I'm halfway tempted to pick up five Rhode Island Reds at the feed store when their's come in. All 30 chicks I ordered plus the customary mystery chick arrived here in North Florida alive and apparently in good condition. I looked at each chick as I took them out of their box and if there's an exotic one in there I'm hanged if I can spot it out of the crowd. I'll just have to wait and see when they feather out. Mystery! I dipped each one's beak in the waterer and set them down next to the feeder where I'd put some shiny (large) screws to attract their attention to the feed. When I left they were all chirp, chirp, chirping happily running around like mad.

Not that you could tell it from what I've written above but this is not my first batch of chickens, it's just that every time I get a new lot of day-old chicks they make me goofy in the head for a few days.

If anyone's interested here is where you can find the plans for the brooder I just built. http://www.plamondon.com/brooder.shtml It was developed by the Ohio Cooperative Extension just before the Second World War and used to see extensive service before the multi-thousand confinement operations became commonplace.

I'm looking forward to surprising my daughter with the chicks when she gets home tonight!

........Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), February 04, 2002

Answers

Your mystery chick is probably an Araucana rooster! At least that's always been my luck. He will look just like the others, except his cheek feathers will begin to pouf out in a couple of days, giving him the look of mutton-chop sideburns. Otherwise, he will look just like the Rocks and Wyandotts.

-- melina b. (goatgalmjb1@hotmail.com), February 04, 2002.

Congrats on your new arrivals Alan. I'm sure you are very excited. I'm sure your daughter will be too! Is this your first go with raising chicks? I know nothing about them but would love to learn about the different types and what their "functions" are. I'm embarassed to say this, but I don't even know which ones are best for just eggs and which are best for meat and which are good for both - LOL. I'd love to learn now though so that when I have my own little piece of paradise, FAR FAR away from the city life I lead now, I'll be able to try my hand at it without putting the poor little critters in danger from my ignorance!

What I like about this forum is that NOBODY makes you feel stupid. EVERYONE is willing to help educate those of us who have not been fortunate enough to have been raised with this knowledge. :o)

Anyway, I wish you all the best with your new brood.

Blessings,

-- Greenthumbelina (sck8107@aol.com), February 04, 2002.


No, I've kept hens off and on for some years now but it's been a couple of years since the last time I've brooded chicks so it's like experiencing it for the first time all over again. I suppose if I do get my little egg business off the ground and start incubating and brooding my own chicks several times a year I'll be a lot more blase' about it but until then getting new chicks has always been on off my favorite experiences of the entire enterprise.

It would be ironic if my "mystery chick" turns out to be an Ameracauna as the one rooster that I've kept for my present hens happens to be a Rhode Island Red/Ameracauna cross with beatiful RIR coloring and tufted ears. Cogburn is not the brightest bird, half the time he'll sleep in the bottom of the hen house rather than roosting like the hens do, but he's pretty. My two and a half year old daughter tells me every morning, "Daddy, Cogburn is saying good morning!"

........Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), February 04, 2002.


Congrats on being a "dad" 31 times over Alan!!! Nothing as cute and adorable as those tiny peeps for the first week of their arrival! I just wish they would stay that cute longer. Sounds like a nice mix you got, I have had all those varieties over the years, but right now I have Black Australorps, I am hoping they will live up to their reputation as the champs of egg production in the heavy brown egg layer catagory. I will find out once the spring daylight and temperatures set in.

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), February 04, 2002.

I still don't know what kind of chicken my mystery chick is. At least it turned out to be a hen. It is cream colored. I looked through the entire McMurray catalog and it doesn't look like any of the ones pictured. I'm curious to see what its eggs look like when it starts laying here anytime.

Congrats. to your new additions.

-- Anita in NC (anitaholton@mindspring.com), February 04, 2002.



Well, sure am jealous up here of your ability to have chicks at this time of year! We're still in the dead of winter - it was -20 yesterday - and we can't cope with chicksicles for many months yet.

But here is as good a place as any to come in with an update on my own chickens. After having lost 2 of my original 40 early in the autumn for "just being chickens" (I am thinking it was egg blockage), I can now reprot that my effort to keep the rest aloive while I went south for five weeks has been a magnificent success. I returned home last week to have all 38 chooks alive and clucking! The 350-lb feed barrel I created was JUST big enough, but there was still plenty of water - and liquid, at that - in the 55-gallon barrel. Not too many eggs, either - about 40 (they're getting tossed); and no frostbite.

So overall it was quite an experiment, and a gamble, and it paid off. I still don't think I can afford to sell my eggs at less than $1 per egg to make a profit on this venture, though...

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), February 05, 2002.


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