First time Chicken Mama

Hi all:

Although I grew up around farms and chickens, I have never owned any before.....That is until a box arrived the first week of February with 26 baby chicks!!! We ordered them through McMurray Hatchery. They were all healthy with the exception of one little chick. After spending some time on Google, we discovered she had splayed leg. I tried my best to help her with a couple different fixes I found online but she passed away within the first week. (Heart breaking!) We chose the assorted brown egg layers and are still trying to determine what all we have. We will be splitting them with our friend so I am in the process of choosing the ones I want to keep. My #1 girl is a Barred Rock. I am doing research to tell what the others are. My youngest and I have named her Hei-Hei (the cute chicken from Moana and also the name of the caregiver that took care of my grandparents the last 10 years or so of their life). I am looking forward to learning all about raising chickens!!! Any advice for a newbie is greatly appreciated!

Welcome to BYC and congrats on the new chicks! As they get their feathers, it will be easier to tell what the breeds are, and there is lots of help here. Be sure to check out the Learning Center. All your questions will be answered on BYC...good luck!

Hello from Kansas, corty13tx, and ! Pleased you joined our community! Here are some links that may assist you in the raising of your birds from chick to adult: The Learning Center is packed with useful articles covering the entire range of chicken keeping:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center
And if you want to chat with some local poultry peeps, find your state thread in this link and say howdy: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/270925/find-your-states-thread
Best wishes to you and thanks for joining BCY!

Welcome to BYC and to the poultry keeping obsession! That first batch of chicks is such a special experience! @redsoxs has given you some great links above. The best thing to do is just read through various threads/articles and start tucking things away in your "tool box" --- ideas that seem like something that fit in your approach to things are things to try, things that don't fit with your personal preferences are things to read anyway just in case you need it at some point in the future. There are SO many ways you can do just bout everything to do with keeping chickens and no one right or wrong way of doing it. It sounds like you've gotten off to a great start (sorry about your one loss, but even that was an example of you doing all the best things you could and it was, at the very least, a learning experience that might come in handy next time) already!

Once your chicks are about 5 weeks old, you can post pictures of them at this link to get help with identifying their breed: What Breed Or Gender is This?

Best of luck to you, have fun with all those chicks!

I am glad you joined us!

Welcome to BYC! It's great to have you.

Ha, Hei-Hei. I quite literally named a chicken that just today... the movie was quite good though, wasn't it?

G’Day from down under corty13tx Welcome!

Sorry to hear of your loss As you have already received links to some great starting points, I will just wish you all the best.

I hope you enjoy being a BYC member. There are lots of friendly and very helpful folks here so not only is it overflowing with useful information it is also a great place to make friends and have some fun.

If you would like to share pictures and stories of your flock, you have come to the right place. BYC’ers never tire of these and do not back away slowly or commence eye rolling when the photo album or home videos come out