New to Ordering Chicks by Mail...

[write2caroline]

Your Welsummers and your speckled at first will look like chipmonks but as they feather out they will look very different. The easter eggers will start to grow feathers under their lower beaks. I had bantam EE's and one turned out like marble splash in shades of grey and the other is more yellows and rusts and browns both are GORGEOUS. I called my two welsummers port and starboard because one's comb went to the right (Starboard) and the other listed to port (left) They were really pretty too! For a long time I thought my Cream Legbar looked like the welsummers but then her chest turned a beautiful peachy rosey color. My Speckleds were easy to id once the feathering started.

Enjoy your babies!!! Post some photos's

Caroline

 

[donrae]

Welsummers have yellow legs, Sussex have white. Easter eggers usually have dark colored legs and pea combs, beards and muffs. The other two breeds have straight combs.

 

[Katt66]

Thanks for all the info guys. <3


It's been a hectic weekend and this is the first peace and quiet I've had to get around to this thread again.

Our babies arrived safe and sound at 2:38 PM on Friday afternoon, right on schedule. And Wow! I never realized the arrival of baby chicks is an event as grand as the arrival of a baby. XD At least around here it is. I had my two girls, cousin, and cousin's daugher (2nd cousin) all texting me all day long. "are the babies here yet?" "Did they get here yet?!!" "Mommy why are they taking so long!!???D:" And lots more to that effect.

I was getting impatient myself. I cleaned the chicken coop, cleaned the run. Picked up the dog poop in the yard. Turned the compost pile. Cut the grass. Raked the grass. Tilled the veggie garden. Ran the vacuum twice. Washed the windows. And a thousand other things trying to kill time and stop going nuts myself waiting for the call from the Post Office. Finally about 2PM I was trying to talk myself out of driving to the Post Office to wait for the chicks to come in. After all they said they'd call. She even said she'd call me on her cell phone the moment they got there if the Post Office phone was in use. I grabbed my purse and keys and went down to the truck. Sat there for a while and dozed off. Woke up to the glorious sound of my cell phone ringing with the call that we'd been waiting for all day long.

So I turned the heat on high and closed the windows in the truck to make it as warm as possible for the babies figuring they'd be chilled from their ride through the mail. Drove the 5 miles to the Post Office in record time. Texted both daughters, cousin, and cousin's daughter on the way tot ell them the chicks finally got here. Jumped out of the truck and was greeted at the door by the wonderful postal worker who'd promised she'd call the moment the babies got off the delivery truck. She seemed nearly as excited as I was so I opened the lid slightly right there so she could have a peek at the chicks. I figured I owed her that much for being so awesome and calling me so quick. Small town areas are the best and I wouldn't live anywhere else. Though everybody knows your business, sometime it's a good thing.

So we drove back home with the heater on high and the chicks all peeping madly from inside their little box. I got to the house at the same time as my girls got off the bus. And also at exactly the same time my Mom calls me to ask if I could please run in the house, get her keys, open her car and read off the mileage to her as she's trying to get her registration renewed and needs the mileage. Worst possible timing EVER! But she's my Mom, so of course I had to do it. So I pull in, jump out and lock the truck and rush up to the house to grab Mom's car keys. I hit the steps to the house the same time the kids all hit the truck. With no time to explain I yell to them, "DON'T open the truck! The chicks are in there. Leave them there till I come back! It's locked!"

So I get my Mom taken care of. Open the truck back up and grab the chicks, still peeping away, in their little box and rush into the house, down to the basement and quickly tell daughters 1 and 2 and daughter 2's best friend to one at a time take each chick out of the box and dip it's beak into the water and then let it go in the brooder box. While I ran back upstairs to lock up the 3 dogs so they wouldn't be underfoot. In the meantime, my cousin gets there with her daughter and the box they're taking their chicks home in. (The original arrangement was I'd order the chicks, keep one or two of each and give her the rest since they needed new egglayers and have tons of room) Followed by my Aunt and Mom about five minutes later.
Sitting here now several days later, I just realized I never did get pics of the whole batch of chicks with all the chaos at the time. But all were happy and healthy and amazingly alert and active, I thought, for having been traveling for two days. I thought they'd be a lot more lethargic and was worried about them recuperating after some of the horror stories I've read about chicks arriving in bad shape. We had 5 Welsummers, 6 Speckled Sussex (one of these was our extra "insurance chick") and 5 Easter Eggers, 2 dark chipmunk marked, 1 a gorgeous blue, and two white. One of the white EE's had a severe crossbeak and never did start eating. And would only drink if we dipped her beak in the water. So I ended up culling her on Saturday morning because she was wasting away and I didn't want the others to pick at her and torture her any more. With how badly her beak was crossed from hatching I knew she'd have a really rough life ahead of her even if we did get her to eat.

Anyway, other than the little crossbeak EE everyone else was and still is lively and happy and eating like crazy. We kept the blue and darkest mahogany chipmunk marked EE chicks (Just because I loved the blue and my older daughter insisted we were keeping the dark chipmunk, so to end the argument I kept both) and a single Welsummer and Speckled Sussex. All my worries about not being able to tell them apart were unfounded. The Sussex chicks DO have much lighter bellies. And at only 5 days old I can tell them apart from the Welsummers by their wing feathers as well. The Sussex chicks have very light cream colored tips even on their baby wing feathers, with a black stripe behind that and a slightly darker brown feather the rest of the way up. While the Welsummers have pretty much solid brown wing feathers from the tip all the way back.

Because we could tell them apart really easily after all, my cousin took their chicks right away on Friday, which turned out to be a good thing as our 4 are quite happy with the extra room. And Susie reports that she already had to move the 11 they took into a bigger enclosure, they're so active and growing so quickly.

Here's Benct, the dark mahogany Chipmunk colored EE. She is a gluttonous blob of feathers and eats nonstop. She literally fell asleep beak down in her food bowl last night. I thought she'd eaten herself to death, but she jumped up and ran off peeping angrily at the annoyance when my daughter, Kali poked her awake.


And this is Rinn. The little blue EE chick I fell in love with the moment I saw her. I'd decided I was going to name the EE chick we kept Amy back when I ordered them from Cackle and they weren't even hatched yet. But I was out voted by the kids, and her name is Rinn instead.
She's still a pretty girl. And she honestly doesn't care what her name is so I call her Amy when the kids aren't around anyway. XD
I just noticed that you can also see the very light wing tips on the Sussex chick I was talking about in this picture.


Here's Louise, the Speckled Sussex chick. Of the six we got, she's the tiniest, tiniest of the whole batch as well. So my younger daughter HAD to keep her.


And finally, after everybody else picked their chicks I had to pick one of the Welsummers, since we WERE supposed to be keeping one of each. And as I was voted out on naming my Blue EE chick Amy, this is the official Amy. ^_^