31 new chicks

Dmontgomery

Songster
Apr 1, 2014
839
630
222
Longville, La
and more to come!


Way back in March, I asked my wife if I needed to build a new brooder. We gave our old one away at the end of last summer. She told me we wouldn't be getting any new chicks this year, unless one of the hens went broody. Then she could raise them herself in the coop.
In April, a friend asked me to build her a new coop. About the time I was finishing it up a couple weeks ago, the friend ordered 25 BR chicks. Naturally my wife immediately decided that we also needed new chicks. Can't have somebody else with new babies, and us not getting any. So she ordered 25 chicks from McMurray. At 7am on Thursday I picked our new chicks from the post office. 5 Black Giants, 5 Buff Cochins, 15 Brown Egg Layers, and the ever popular, 1 Rare Exotic something. All the chicks arrived healthy and seem to be doing great. They are all very active and consuming large quantities of starter feed!
A little after noon on the same day, my wife arrived home from helping with the VBS at church, with a box containing 3 Frizzled Black Cochins and 2 frizzled Buff Cochins. Apparently there is a breeder about 20 miles from here who will actually deliver the chicks to you. The story I got was the lady just happen to be in the area delivering a big order and knew we might need more chicks. I don't exactly believe this story, but there isn't much I can do about it. These chicks appear to be 1-2 weeks old, because their feathers have started to fill in a bit.
This will about double the size of our flock, but I'm confident we have room for them. I have 768 sqft of coop and run area combined with 384 sqft under roof. The chickens free range sunup to sundown over several acres of land. I have 80' linear of roosting space, so nobody should feel crowded.
We also have another RIR who just went broody on 9 eggs and a guinea hen adding eggs to her nest each day. She's up to 12 now, so she should start setting in another week or so. The last RIR to go broody has 8 chicks about 7 weeks old she is just starting to wean.
I may have to start buying feed by the pallet. And I guess I need to learn how to grow my own meal worms.
 
The 5 frizzles got kicked out of the brooder last week. I put them in the grow out pen in the coop, but they wanted out after the 2nd day.

These are our newest additions. They were hatched Sunday night/Monday morning.

There are 6 eggs under another hen. They were due tomorrow but starting pipping this morning. And another 5 under my OEGB due to hatch on Friday. We lost all our guinea eggs to a couple snakes.
 
5 of the 6 eggs under our 2nd hen hatched Tuesday night. My wife went out about 10pm and all 5 were still wet. The 6th egg was left over from the first hen. We took it from the nest late Wednesday afternoon so the new mama would get her babies out of the nest. We broke it open and there had been no development in it.
So far all the chicks have hatched by day 20. I assume 90* weather sped them up a little. All 9 new babies seem to be active. Very little ruckus between the 2 new mamas so far, but #2 hasn't taken her's out in the run yet. They are letting us hand feed the chicks, so socialization has already started.
 
Henrietta hatched out 2 of her 4 eggs Friday night. By yesterday afternoon she had given up on the other 2 and took her babies out to scratch and find a new nesting spot.
Friday afternoon we had moved all the brooder chicks in to the segregation pen. They immediately ran through the chain link fencing and started scratching in the pine shavings under the roosts. It took a while to move all their "furniture" from the brooder and put down fresh shavings in the pen for them to be comfortable with it. They are loving all the extra room to spread their wings. It's raised 3 1/2" off the ground so they can run in and out from any side.
Henrietta is about the size of a 5 week old chick, so she has picked out a corner of the pen to bed down. The 1 week old chicks are also running under the pen walls to play with the bigger chicks. Their mamas get ticked off about it but are being patient with all the new additions so far. When the mamas scratch and call their chicks for food, all 25 brooder chicks go running too! It's cute.
The final count is 11 new chicks hatched in the last week, to go along with the 8 hatched back in April. We shall see how many turn out to be roosters and get to stay.
 

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