Chickens

About a week ago, I placed an order for 15 chickens. Five Buff Orpingtons, four Rhode Island Reds, three Barred Rocks, two White Rocks, and one Black Australorp male. I picked those breeds for specific reasons. One, they're all good layers; we want chickens for eggs, not for slaughter. Two, they're supposedly all relaxed and friendly breeds. Three, they are all cold weather tolerant. I do want at least a couple of other breeds. The Easter Eggers, and I do want a few actual Ameraucanas as well. I was looking at the ornamental breeds of chickens available and I'd probably want one or two, but I haven't decided which. I think I need to put that up to a vote with the family.

I don't have to tell you how excited I am to get our chickens in two weeks! I just happened to have an idea of what dates the local country store was getting chicks and I thought it would be a great idea to go look at them to get an idea of what to expect.... Well, let's be honest, we all knew it would happen, we came home with two little babies! I had already bought everything we needed for the chickens the day I ordered them, so we set up a little tub for them, and they made themselves at home.

We used a tupperware box for storage and put it in our bathroom. Like I said, it's pretty cold up here, so we have a space heater in there so they don't chill. We set up a reflector lamp with a clamp on the side of the bucket and the first day we used a regular 100 watt bulb, but today we're going to try a red Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL). I read that using a white light might excite them too much and stress them out.

We used pine shavings that we bought at the country store. Make sure that it's not cedar. The store in my town only has pine outside that you have to ask the clerk for like ice, everything else is cedar. I'm not an expert about chickens and since looking into the cedar thing further and finding that even pine is bad for chickens, I may just go get some sand from the river bank. But they seem fine, so I don't think my chickens will mutate or anything from standing on pine for a few days.

I bought two waterers and three feeders, one feeder for grit. I read that the water and food will get dirty and need to be cleaned several times a day, so I bought extra so we could change it out. Handy for the water, it got gross quickly; the food is still alright after 24 hours. I am going to buy the nipple waterers, however. I've read several places and a Backyard Chicken (BYC) user's random piece of advice was that these are a necessity for clean drinking water.

We're trying our hardest not to handle them too much, but they're really cute, so we're failing a little. We don't pick them up unless we have to, but they're usually pretty willing to climb up into our hands for a little nap.

We won't put all 17 of them in here, of course. We have a bigger tupperware storage box that we'll use. I think we may put them together, but we'll see how it goes. We'll keep the smaller box to put the chicks in when we have to clean though. They're messy babies! It needs to be cleaned daily, if not dumped, at least covered. With sand it may be simpler just to use a kitty litter scoop.

The coop remains a mystery at the moment. We're not quite ready to start a big project outside yet. It's still pretty chilly and there is a lot of chopping, clearing, and digging that needs to be done, so more on that later. Check back soon!

B.Burnett