Chickens!

The chickens are here!



They are so adorable, even if they did bite me when I was moving them into the brooder set up.  We have 6 Barred Rock chicks (our future laying flock), 19 Red Rangers (meat birds), and one 'rare chick' that we got for free with our order.  He looks kind of like a silky to me.  They're all living in the sun room.  The dining room idea got nixed.  We got a second brooder light and they're nice and toasty.  That's why the video is so very red.

The dark ones are my layers, the yellow ones are the meat birds, and there's one that's grey and white that is our rare chick.

Everyone's eating and drinking, so I'm hopeful that they're all going to do well.  Joe has them under the rack we've set up to start our seeds.  I was pretty surprised to see we get frosts until late May, so I'm delaying seed start until March 15th for the 10 week seeds.  I don't want them to get too big and not be able to get them outside.

I've been visiting the chicks a lot to get them used to me.  The deal is that I handle a lot of the care, Joe handles the processing.  They can bond with me and hopefully come when I shake a container of treats.  I want to be able to range them a bit when they're not in their tractors.  And they're also really cute.  There isn't much in the world cuter than brand new chicks.