Chickens?!

Dada holding a chick

We have started our backyard flock. Last Saturday we went to Callahan's General Store and bought four baby chicks: two Barred Plymouth Rocks and two Brown Leghorns all pullets (females). These are intended to be layers. Here you can see Dada holding one of the Barred Rocks. They are cute as the dickens.

We currently have them on the screened porch in a cage I cobbled together from 1/2 inch hardware cloth and an extra light socket on a cord we happended to have lying around. At Callahan's we also got some chick starter feed, a little feeder and a little waterer.

That and a little bedding (we're using pine shavings we got from the exotic pet store) is pretty much all you need to keep the chicks alive.

They are growing really fast and have already developed wings sufficient to get out of your hand if they really try (but not really fly).

By about six or eight weeks old they should be big enough to live in a proper chicken house, which I have yet to build. Julie ordered a chicken cage that should be more than sufficient for them while we get the chicken house built.

From our experience with the playscape we've realized that getting stuff built quickly is just not realistic between the beastly heat and Dada. It doesn't help that we've both had some sort of crud the last couple of weeks that has sapped a lot of our energy reserves (but hasn't been bad enough to actually put us out of commission.