As we’d hoped, both our New Zealand does kindled. The white one, Ava, had been “haystaching” early on, so we were pretty confident she would deliver. The agouti (brown) one, Loretta, didn’t obviously make haystaches like Ava did, but she did hollow out a spot in her nest box that looked promising. Continue reading “Two Sets Of Kits”
Author: Carrie
Tips For Spring Chickens
Anyone who has been to the farm store this time of year knows it’s chick season. The stores will have big galvanized tubs full of chicks and ducklings on display, and some, frustratingly, will fail to ensure that people and/or children don’t handle those chicks (which can result in dropped and injured chicks).
As we described in yesterday’s post, we got our first chicks last spring (late April). Despite trying to prepare by researching before we got them, we still learned a lot through hands-on experience, and we’d like to share those lessons learned in case you decide to get some chicks so you can avoid making the same mistakes we did.
A Few Tips For Bringing Your First Chicks Home Continue reading “Tips For Spring Chickens”
Chicken Math Is Real
Before we acquired our own chickens, we heard about this phenomenon called “chicken math”, where people seem to lose the ability to think rationally about how many chickens they can/should have. We chuckled and imagined that these were people with latent hoarding tendencies. Until it happened to us. Continue reading “Chicken Math Is Real”
What’s That Sound?
The chicks that hatched in mid-January are now over five weeks old. When we went to gather them for their outside time today, we heard a weird noise. Not cheeping or squawking…we had to listen again to figure out what we were actually hearing.
One of the teens was crowing! We knew we’d have some roosters, and this confirms we have at least one. It’s an Australorp mix, and already has a pretty sizeable comb and wattles coming in. Precocious fellow!
Ladies Of Leisure
In anticipation of kindling, the NZ does have been brought inside to their kindling cages. They could, theoretically, kindle outside, but with the recent dramatic fluctuations in temperature, we prefer to err on the side of caution and keep them inside.
The Teens’ First Day Outside
The first batch of chicks from our stock are now about five weeks old (we call them “teens”)and nearly fully feathered. They’re also creating a crazy amount of dust in their brooder, so we figured the weather – 70 degrees with a gentle breeze – would be perfect for a first day outside in the chicken tractor. Continue reading “The Teens’ First Day Outside”