- May 13, 2012
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Okay, so I just had an episode where one of my two remaining hens (once a party of 5) was battling flystrike. Thankfully, she has come through fine, but during this trying period I began to ponder just how lonely a single hen would be and decided that after being chickless for 5 whole years it was high time to get some babies. We have been servants to a lovely group of cochin hens we raised from day old chicks for this whole time.
Well, we decided as much as we love our cochins perhaps we would like to add a little variety to our group. We scoured out our prefered hatchery's website and made a list of what we wanted. I matched up dates for all the different breeds and saw that they should all be good to come on the 30th of this month. I called the hatchery to ask a few questions before placing my order and learned that no, they would not have all breeds on the 30th, but actually the 23rd- So here are the chicks we have coming next week followed by my questions that immediately occured to me once I had placed my order and hung up the phone this morning:
2- salmon favorelle
3- standard sultans
3- mottled houdan
3- partridge silkies.
When our cochins were little I actually converted my daughters old Little Tykes playhouse into a brooder and kept it in the garage. This worked great for 5 chicks until I could move them out to their permanent coop. The playhouse has been long gone now so I bought a Chick- N- Hutch online to use as a brooder for this group. I plan to once again set it up in my garage until the babies are big enough to go outdoors. I plan to use chicken wire to make a divider in my run between the new babies and the grown hens. I hope to move the hutch out there for them to use as a roost until they are big enough to go in the regular coop with the grown ups. Now, I have paid little if any attention to prefab chciken housing so I'm not 100% sure just how big my Chick-N-Hutch will be. It will be here the end of this week so I will have time to set it up and make any modifications if we need to before the chicks come. However, going on the knowledge that it is big enough for 4 standard adult birds, I'm assuming it will be okay for 11 chicks for at least a couple of months especially if they are allowed to spend the days in the run once they feather out. Honestly I'm thinking it will be plenty warm enough here (North Texas) for them to be out there during the day by the time they are 2-3 weeks ...... how far off base am I? Also, the thought occured to me that even though all the chicks will be a day old when we get them, some breeds may be smaller than others, should I plan now to have to seperate them? If so, who do you think will be okay together from my list up there? Thanks in advance for any answers and advice!
Lea
Well, we decided as much as we love our cochins perhaps we would like to add a little variety to our group. We scoured out our prefered hatchery's website and made a list of what we wanted. I matched up dates for all the different breeds and saw that they should all be good to come on the 30th of this month. I called the hatchery to ask a few questions before placing my order and learned that no, they would not have all breeds on the 30th, but actually the 23rd- So here are the chicks we have coming next week followed by my questions that immediately occured to me once I had placed my order and hung up the phone this morning:
2- salmon favorelle
3- standard sultans
3- mottled houdan
3- partridge silkies.
When our cochins were little I actually converted my daughters old Little Tykes playhouse into a brooder and kept it in the garage. This worked great for 5 chicks until I could move them out to their permanent coop. The playhouse has been long gone now so I bought a Chick- N- Hutch online to use as a brooder for this group. I plan to once again set it up in my garage until the babies are big enough to go outdoors. I plan to use chicken wire to make a divider in my run between the new babies and the grown hens. I hope to move the hutch out there for them to use as a roost until they are big enough to go in the regular coop with the grown ups. Now, I have paid little if any attention to prefab chciken housing so I'm not 100% sure just how big my Chick-N-Hutch will be. It will be here the end of this week so I will have time to set it up and make any modifications if we need to before the chicks come. However, going on the knowledge that it is big enough for 4 standard adult birds, I'm assuming it will be okay for 11 chicks for at least a couple of months especially if they are allowed to spend the days in the run once they feather out. Honestly I'm thinking it will be plenty warm enough here (North Texas) for them to be out there during the day by the time they are 2-3 weeks ...... how far off base am I? Also, the thought occured to me that even though all the chicks will be a day old when we get them, some breeds may be smaller than others, should I plan now to have to seperate them? If so, who do you think will be okay together from my list up there? Thanks in advance for any answers and advice!
Lea
