Photo of week-old chicks

From what I read on the hatchery's web site, our girls were born on Sunday night, so they are a week old today. We've been cuddling them daily, and they already are showing their personalities. Jay's buff orpington (called the golden retriever of chickens) is by far the calmest, and even falls asleep while Jay is holding it. Very cute.

I took their box outside the garage to get some natural light for photos, and got one good one. They are starting to grow out wing feathers already, but still have lots of fuzz on their heads and bodies.

We're going through a lot of feed, mostly because they are really messy eaters. I mean, are they bathing in the stuff? Most of our clean up is just sweeping up food crumbles they have scattered about.

Friday night Jay, Matt, Marissa and I had a lovely dinner and we continued our coop planning. We're all finding it difficult to figure out where to start, so we wrote down a bunch of our "requirements" and will likely take a big trip to the lumber yard on our first building day (May 17!)

Chick Update, Day 4

Here's a guest post, while Josh is out of town on business. I had fun on Facebook Monday, posting, "I never thought I'd hear myself say, 'my husband just left town to go pick up some chicks!'"

The girls are growing quickly! A couple of them already have feathers on their wings. We have two blond and three darker chicks. I assumed the larger blond was Prissy (Lady Priscilla d'Ova), my Buff Orpington. However, the other evening Matt stated that the Silky has five toes while the Buff only has four. Indeed, the largest of all the chicks in the Silky! Confusing, since it was supposed to be the smallest of them all. I wonder whether they hatch them early so they get a head start.

Marisa and I cleaned out the bin this morning, and I put the paper, poop and food in our compost. We checked for "pasty butt" and they're all ok. So far they're very nervous about being picked up by us. With some hand feeding and repetition, I expect they'll bond with us.

So far, three of Josh's and my Facebook friends have posted this video from YouTube and tagged us, suggesting that this will be us. Indeed, I'd love it if that were the case! This is one of the sweetest things I've seen in a while.

One of the booklets I have states the bin should be cleaned out twice a day. Marisa and I have decided that they will do evenings, and we will do mornings.

The co-parenting project is an interesting one. Coordinating with just one person (Josh) requires little effort. It will take more communication and consensus to do this with another couple. And doing this in community is just what we wanted.

Sorry no pictures this morning—more to come soon!

Guest correspondent over and out.

Five chicks

On Monday, I drove to Waterloo, Wis. to pick up five chicks. I found myself getting nervous - would they be warm enough, did we have a good brooder for them, would they all live?

When I arrived, I first saw a counter with little cartons and the sound of cheeping chicks filled the room.

There were several people in line before me, so I scanned the boxes and found ours.

We recently learned that the hatchery can't gender identify the silkies because they are so small. So on Sunday, Jay, Matt and Marissa and I decided to ask if they had another silkie. Unfortunately, they were all sold.

While I was waiting I looked around. I spotted these baskets of eggs, I'm guessing the next batch for the incubator.

Just like in the movie Mad City Chickens, I spotted the warm incubators that rotated fertilized eggs and kept them at just the right temperature.  

I paid for the birds and scurried out to my car. It was COLD and I didn't want them to get a chill. As soon as I got in my car and started it up to get the heat going, I opened the box. Inside were five fluffy cotton balls cheeping away.

The chicks are now in our brooder, a large plastic bin in our garage. Matt and Marissa have a key to get in, and I'm sure we'll all be paying many visits to ooh and ahh. They really are that cute.

Our instructions are not to handle them the first day, but then to start having them eat our of our hands and pick them up to have the imprint on us.

More to come, I'm sure.

Dust bath

I can't explain why, but I find watching the chickens take a dust bath highly amusing.

They make a little bowl in the ground, roll around in it, kick it up onto themselves (and sometimes onto their sisters) and generally look like they are having a very good time.

The practical thing is the dust get rid of or prevent mites and other external parasites.

And - it's just so "happy chicken time."

"Where do you find them local chicks?"

As we started doing our research on getting chicks, we were surprised to find that you can mail order them! One of the reasons is because within 72 hours of hatching, chicks do not need to eat or drink. Shipping by priority mail is conveniently within that threshold.

However, after talking with Susan at Cluck the Chicken Store and reading some advice on backyardchicken.com (oh my I could spend a lot of time on that site!) we found both were emphatic about "Do not let your children open the box!" due to occasional shipping mortality. We wondered what our local options were.

Susan recommended we get our first batch at Abendroth's Hatchery in Waterloo, Wis. - just  35 minutes from Madison. They may not have the world's largest selection of chickens, but they certainly have plenty for newbies like us. And we don't have to worry about our first experience with chicks arriving with a few casualties.

At this hatchery, chicks hatch on Sunday nights, and are available on Mondays. When I spoke with someone at the hatchery, he was pretty insistent on picking up on Monday so the birds were fresh and healthy.

So Jay and I and our neighbors did some math with a calendar, and after learning that our chicks would need to be in their brooder for 6 to 8 weeks before moving into the chicken coop, we realize that we could easily order them now to be picked up on April 14 and they would be ready to move into our coop sometime after Memorial Day.

I ordered our five pullet chicks (females) to pick up in a week. Anyone want to guess how much a baby chick costs?

• Pullets are females. You do not need a rooster for a hen to lay eggs, just to lay fertile eggs.
• Straight run is you get what you get (they haven't been separated by gender).
• Cockerels are makes - they'll become rosters.

Chicks ordered - time to prepare the nursery

We did it. We ordered five chicks. If all goes well, we pick them up Monday, April 14.

Following our field trip to Paoli, Matt, Marissa, Jay and I were excited about ordering our chicks. I started reading my new book, Gardening with Chickens by Jessi Bloom; Jay paged through his first aid guide; and Matt and Marissa read through the book they bought at Cluck the Chicken Store. We exchanged a few emails over the week, and settled on getting five chicks. 

Five? The city of Madison only allows four. Even though we're getting them from a local hatchery which will dramatically reduce mortality, just in case one of the chicks doesn't make it, we want to have four the same age in our flock. And as I said to Matt, “Five is okay as long as our neighbor doesn't complain” :-)

We decided that each couple would pick out a pair of birds, and of course I decided to throw in that third. Unlike going to the pet store, we simply called an order into the hatchery. The following images are what they will look like when mature; photos and descriptions are from the hatchery.

Matt and Marissa chose to get an Americana, also known as an Easter Egger, known for their bluish and greenish eggs. 

They also chose a Silkie, a smallish hen that has five toes, lays smallish eggs but are the cutest thing you ever did see.

Jay chose to get a Buff Orpington. It's a largish bird, but is quiet and is supposed to have a friendly disposition.

Actually, what we've learned is that if handled gently and with love, most chickens will become friendly.

I decided on a Silver-Laced Wyandotte. It has beautifully-tipped feathers, lays large brown eggs and will get to about five pounds.

Our fifth chicken, which I'm going to say doesn't belong to anyone in particular, is a Black Australorp, which has glossy black plumage with a greenish purple sheen, and weighs about 5 to 7 pounds.

While we read that indeed, birds of a feather flock together, we also learned that in a flock where no one looks the same, no one in particular gets picked on because everybody is different. We're hoping these birds look sufficiently different from each other that they all end up getting along.

I will write a little more about the hatchery in a future post. For now, were very excited that we made the phone call to order them.

Rubber boots make Madison debut

Rubber boots purchased
in Tena, Ecuador, 8/2005.
My new boots look almost the same.

While I probably had rubber boots when I was a kid, I don't really remember them. I do remember what we called "buckle boots," these large over-the-shoe boots that had these metal buckles that my little fingers always found difficult to open and close. 

In 2005, just before arriving for a month of volunteering on a jungle farm in Ecuador, I purchased a pair of rubber boots. The farmer suggested rubber boots would be a good idea.

I practically lived in those boots. A day didn't go by when I slipped them on to do some gardening, harvest food or simply walk around the farm.

Before I arrived at the farm, I went for a hike to a waterfall.
The rubber boots were fine footwear.

About the only time I didn't wear my rubber boots was when I went into town, and that's because we had to do a lot of walking on a gravel road to get to the bus, and walking on hard surfaces was a little uncomfortable in rubber boots. But walking on the soft jungle floor or in the mud was quite comfy in rubber boots.

While working in a river, we wore our boots even though
the river was deeper than the boots were tall.
Occasionally I "emptied" them. 

Having no need or room for rubber boots at the end of my journey in South America, and left them on the farm, right next to a dozen other pair of rubber boots left by volunteers in the same situation.

Seriously, I lived in those boots for a month.

Fast-forward to 2014, and this whole chicken business has suddenly got me thinking about rubber boots again. One aspect of bio security, and we're not talking about some kind of weird chemical warfare, is to have one set of shoes that stays in the yard and goes nowhere off the property. This prevents tracking disease into our animal environment. Rubber boots are also terribly practical. No laces, pants tuck in so they don't get dirty or wet and easy to rinse off.

And they are kinda sexy.

Planting trees in Ecuador, in my boots!

So off to Farm and Fleet where Jay and I each bought a pair of rubber boots. Fortunately, we are the same foot size, so it doesn't matter who puts on which pair :-)

What's your favorite footwear in the garden?

At left is a photo of Jay with our new boots. Just for perspective, we spent more on those boots than I spent in the entire month I lived volunteering on the jungle farm. I don't recall exactly what I spent on the South American boots there, but $8 comes to mind. These were $20/pair.