Chickies are here!

 Last Wednesday, despite the sleet and snow, Lige managed to get to Kearney to pick up our chicks.  He surprised me by getting an additional 10 for laying- five Brown Leghorns and five Barred Rocks.  The remaining 36 were the Cornish Cross chicks for meat.   Twelve for us, and twelve each for 2 other friends.

We attempted to put them in the brooder in the garage, but after a couple hours we knew we wouldn't be able to keep the chicks warm enough.  Thanks to my handy husband, an hour later we had a new, smaller brooder box on stilts to fit in the mud room over the dog kennels.  The chicks are much happier and warmer in the house.

Unloading them into the original brooder.

First hour in the original brooder, already eating and drinking.

 Getting cozy for sleep

 In the new, indoor brooder box- much better!

This is my first experience with chicken of any kind, so I've been reading online as much as I can.  Raising this particular meat bird can be tough.  They can out-eat their bodies' ability to handle the weight.  Though they are only 6 days old, we can already tell the Cornish Cross are bigger than the other breeds we have.  Raising 46 chicks, we are learning, is hard to do without losing a few.  We have lost 3 so far, and another one is not doing well.  All of these are the Cornish Cross.  I know we are raising these for the sole purpose of killing them, but I do not like losing chicks.  I actually feel like a "mother hen" with these babes and have lost track of time just watching them.  I want them to flourish and be healthy.

I love watching the chicks.  You can usually find me in the mud room just staring at them.  I am doing the feeding and watering and changing the litter-which has its own unique smell. Yuck!  I have had dreams about chickens and I swear I hear peeping anywhere I am...in the car, at the store, lol!  I'm turning into a crazy bird lady, ha! 

Moving the chicks into the house has been a lot more fun for the kids, too.  With the chicks so close, it's common to find the kids in petting them and watching them.  We've had to learn how to be quieter and gentler around the chicks.  We're burning through a bottle of "hannitizer" (as Isaac calls the hand sanitizer!).  We've had to institute "visiting hours" so that the chicks can have some down time to settle after being terrorized by the kids.  We've had talks about life and death, we've had talks about taking good care of God's creatures even if we plan to eat them later.  We've discussed germs and bacteria and good hand washing after playing with the chicks.  We are all learning a lot.  And that has been a fun bonus to raising the chicks.  Amana has researched a chick's life cycle in the egg just because she wanted to.  She also made a log documenting her observations of our own chicks.  There are so many interesting things to learn while raising chicks!

Anyway, we are having fun and learning a lot.  In about six short weeks, we will be processing the Cornish Cross for our freezer.  That will be a whole lotta learning of a different kind!