These are the newest members of our flock!  I was in the city a couple days ago to pick up some groceries, dog chow and chicken scratch.  I heard the chicks a cheepin’ the moment I walked in the front door of the ranch supply and made a beeline for them hoping they had a couple of the breeds I’ve been looking for (wyandotte and araucana) and they did!  I picked out six and started to make my way home.  My plan was to tuck these new babies under that little brown bantam hen of ours who is such a great brood hen — she actually hatched a chickie a couple of weeks ago so I thought she’d take to them pretty easily.  She did, at first, but by the second evening she was ignoring the chicks in the coop and they were huddled under the heat lamp together and I worried that if I left them and the hen didn’t decide to sit them, I’d lose them in the night.

So now they’re just to my left in a brooder box under a heat lamp in the kitchen and I am enjoying their company very much.  This is much more work for me to be brooding them myself instead of leaving it to our hen but once they have their baby feathers coming in I’ll move them out to the nursery coop where they’ll have lots of space, a lamp for warmth and lots of dirt do do their digging in.

I love this time of year and I really like keeping chickens.  Chickens and gardening are the two things we have NEVER failed to have in our lives over the span of fifteen years of marriage.

Next on my flock agenda is a couple of new tom turkeys (there’s a bourbon red available down the road from here) more runner ducks and some geese might be sweet if they really will help with garden weeds.  Wish me luck in sourcing these critters!