Hello from Massachusetts!

Hi, BYC! I'm a total newbie to the world of chickens, and just about ready to spontaneously combust from excitement because my order of chicks from the feed store should be ready tomorrow! Eeee! I'm going a little crazy trying to make sure my brooder setup is absolutely perfect, and I think I need someone to tell me that they'll be okay in spite of my neurotic over-preparation.

I'm 20 years old and on indefinite medical leave from college while I deal with chronic Lyme disease and its assorted coinfections and auto-immune complications. My parents really don't like animals in general very much, so I've never had a pet before, but I finally managed to win a concession from them by billing the chickens as a "Aww man, all of my friends are graduating this year and I'm depressed, they're getting showered with graduation presents, don't I deserve a congratulations-for-not-dying-these-past-four-years present?" thing. I, uhm, wasn't exactly expecting it to work - the begging-for-a-pet thing has been a conversational staple since I was, like, four, and it's never worked before. But wow, I am definitely not complaining! I get chickens!

If you ask me again tomorrow, I'll have two Barred Plymouth Rocks, two Silver-Laced Wyandottes, and two Speckled Sussex. Right now I have an empty brooder and a heat lamp that's being raised and lowered and rotated while I go slightly insane with this thermometer.

 

Quote:"Oozing delight" sounds about right! There's a healthy dose of "Oh no, I'm going to mess this all up somehow" in there too, but the delight is wonderful at distracting me from it.

Man oh man, I am going to go crazy with pictures. I'm already taking pictures of my empty brooder just to quench the MUST DOCUMENT EVERYTHING! urge.