The beginning of my flock!

[Appalachickens]

After months devoted to building the chicken coop, I'm more than thrilled to turn to the chicken-keeping phase. Rural King had chicks in and I came home with four of them: a black sex link (Hulda), a calico princess (Minerva/Minnie), a production blue (Florence/Flossie) and a cinnamon queen (Kitty). They are all named after our grandmothers. I have more grandmothers because I'm from a big blended family, so those names will go to the chicks I've ordered. They are in a brooder in the garage, and I've seen all of them eat and drink, so I think we're off to a good start.

 

[HoneyBeeHomestead]

Congrats on the new chicks! They're so cute, and I love their names!

 

[fowltemptress]

Congrats! I had to look up a couple of those - I had no idea hatcheries sold so many different hybrid egg layers.

 

[Appalachickens]

Congrats on the new chicks! They're so cute, and I love their names!

Thank you! My maternal grandmother (Hulda) hated her name, but I like it for a chicken to remind me of her. She would have found me naming a chicken after her very funny.

 

[Appalachickens]

Congrats! I had to look up a couple of those - I had no idea hatcheries sold so many different hybrid egg layers.

I didn't recognize any except the black sex link and stood in the store looking them up on my phone. Rural King gets their chicks from Hoover's Hatchery in Iowa.

 

[Appalachickens]

Well, as is the way in this game, one little girl - the blue production chick - didn't make it. She started becoming increasingly lethargic as her first day went on and would only drink if I dipped her beak in the water. I stayed up most of that night, scrolling through this site for ideas and tried them all - checked for pasty butt (nope), scrambled an egg for her, tried a mix of weak tea and egg yolk that I touched to her beak with a medicine syringe, and tried feeding her sugar water. By the next day, she wouldn't eat at all and spent all her time under the brooder plate with her head hanging down, sometimes lying flat on the bedding. I checked about 3 AM and she had died.

Today, I went back to Rural King because they will replace chicks that die quickly. They had three other gray chicks of a different variety, but all three were prone and well on their way to dying. So very sad to see that. They had very few chicks left, but did have a healthy looking batch of California Tan, a production red/white leghorn cross. She's a beautiful pale yellow with black speckles, and she is happily eating with her new sisters now.

 

[HoneyBeeHomestead]

I'm sorry to hear that. Sometimes, no matter what we do, they don't make it.