All my brooded chicks went to there new homes today.

[LoneCowboy]

Boy, has it been a long day. It was chick day at my house. I raise 50 or so chicks to 7 weeks and sell them off to people who've usually pre-ordered them. mostly people who don't want to bother with brooding.

Well, 2 customers that pre-ordered didn't come get them. One I knew wasn't going to be able to and the other just didn't show up.

Good thing I had a back up. Unlike last time when I got stuck for over a week with chicks not getting picked up, I told them that they had to pick them up between 10:00am and 1:00pm today or they would be sold. Lucky for me I had a person waiting for the extras. Plus, I got 2 roos in the bunch and he even took one of them.

So now all I have left is one EE roo and 2 speckled sussex's I was keeping for myself anyway.

So I cleaned up the coop and moved all my new layers into the coop. They seem a little troubled but all is good.

I also helped DH build a pig pen. 2 pigs are coming tomorrow. I guess it's finally spring.

 

[speckledhen]

Betcha feel lighter now!

 

[LoneCowboy]

Oh man, you are not kidding. That's 54 less little beaks to feed. I lost a few more than I thought though. I found one buried under about 6" of bedding. Very sad, but when you have 60 chicks in there, it's hard to see what's going on everywhere. There is still one unaccounted for. Oh well.

I put about 30 chicks in their place and they have tons of room right now. They were in a place less than 1/2 the size of this coop. This will be the coop most of them live out their days in. Except my blue kids will be moving back to the breeder coop when they get a little bigger.

BTW, Charlotte's kids don't have fuzzy faces.

 

[speckledhen]

Uh, oh, no beards? How many of Charlotte's did you hatch, I can't recall? I have had two pullets in the past that were beardless, one of those weird genes that popped up in these Ameraucana lines I think I mentioned having problems with. OEGBman also has a beardless pullet from the same lines. Mine were the only two I knew about from my own birds, though, till now. Genes are funny things. It's one reason that if I was going to continue breeding Ameraucanas, I would have had to get better stock. Although there were show winning birds on one side of the family, this is what we were discussing in another thread, how even from great lines, undesirable traits pop up sometimes. If they're pullets, they'll still lay pretty bluish eggs, just wouldn't be the best ones to breed.

 

[LoneCowboy]

Well, they may still be a little young, and since they've been stuck away in a distant brooder

it's been hard to sit and watch them much. I'll have to spend more time with them now that they are easier to get to. I hatched 3 of them. One is very very light. Very pretty. I'll try to get photos soon.

 

[speckledhen]

Sometimes they develop the beards slowly and sometimes they just have them right from the start. I was wondering if my Gypsy was going to have much of one, and she's developed a lovely beard now. If you get pics, I'd love to see them. How old are they now?

 

[LoneCowboy]

I'm thinking they are 5-6 weeks. I have so many little batches of this and that running around that I've totally lost track of how old anybody is.

I guess I could look back at old posts or something. Seriously, it's been a hard time keeping up with everybody. I've even haulted egg shipments.

You think I'm confused, you should see the poor chickens. I fill their water and forget to take the plug out so it fills up and other crazy lame brained things like that.

I have cucko marans in the back bed room with one blue and one black orp that hardly know what a human looks like. Speaking of these marans, their coloring is much more defined that a barred rock. Very striking.

Also, it looks like the little barred rock I got from your eggs is a roo. I have one little girl from the other eggs I got and the 3 others were roos. She really is very sweet though. I do like her a lot.