Well, it’s been a week, and everyone is looking great. They’ve doubled in size, and are starting to “feather” out a bit, with some glossy baby feathers replacing their puff on the wings and tails. And a few adventurous chicks have started testing out their wings…prefaced by “peep, peeeeep, PEEEEEP!!!“ and a whole lot of fluttering as they take a running start…off of the backs of the other chicks. Which makes them…not suuuch popular chicks with their fellow brood-mates at the moment. So, next up, is figuring out who is who, and what is what. Ready to try your hand at chick identification??
First off, some clues.
We have 27 chicks, and ordered 25 (they threw in an “exotic” freebie, and apparently one other extra). They’ve been divided by size into two “brooding” boxes, (in about a week we’re planning to put them in a stall in the goat barn, weather depending).
def: Straight run = they could be male OR female. It’s cheaper to order them that way.
There are 12 different types of chicken breeds in the mix, counting the “exotic”, they are as follows:
Silver Spangled Hamburgs (1 female, 2 males), , eggs, entertainment and possible rooster candidate
Cornish Roaster (3 straight run), meat
Mille Fleur Bantam (1 straight run), entertainment and possible rooster candidate
Blue Laced Wyandotte (2 straight run), eggs or meat
Black Giants (2 males, 2 females), eggs and meat
Dark Cornish (2 males, 1 female), eggs and meat
Jumbo Cornish X Rock (2 straight run), meat
Araucana (2 females), eggs (they lay green eggs!)
Black Star (2 females), eggs
Silver Laced Wyandotte (1 straight run), eggs or meat
Golden Wyandotte (2 straight run), eggs or meat
Free Rare Exotic Chick (straight run), who knows!!!
I’ve put video samples of each breed on one page, which you can see here: Our Baby Chick Order – Spring 2012
And, here are our videos. I’ll get more, but this is a start.
PS. Although a lot of the books and posts I read online said to just stick with chick starter feed, that’s not really the way we roll. So starting on day 1, they’ve had new foods introduced to them.
First day was chopped hard boiled egg (sounds weird, but was highly recommended by a few blogs, and if you really think about it…it actually DOES make sense). Then for the next few days I chopped up apples, bananas, lettuce, celery, etc (whatever we had extra of from our meals) super, duper fine for their tiny beaks. And over the last few days, I’ve been putting in items whole so they can learn to free range, and I think it stimulates their little chick brains. Cucumber is their favorite so far, but strawberry is a close second.
