We have chickens!!! The ability to house animals has been a something I've looked forward to and even thought about as a balancer to some of the sacrifices of rural life (e.g. no longer living across the street from a giant grocery store). I had originally assumed we would order from one of the larger hatcheries, but as we did our research we learned that at many hatcheries the demand for hens so outweighs the demand for male chicks that males are often disposed of shortly after hatching. This did not match sync with our vision of being stewards of the land and animals, so we started looking into local options thinking that smaller scale operations were likely better equipped to handle this challenge.
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| The chicks traveled home in a small post office box. |
We learned that a neighbor just down the road from us hatches chicks, and had Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpington's hatching this month. The chicks are be "straight run", meaning we'll get a mix of male and female chicks. We're not set up to house roosters, but our neighbor has offered to buy the roosters back from us after a few months when the sex becomes apparent.
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| The brooder the chicks came from. The hatchers said that they usually leave them in the brooder for about 12 hours after they hatch, until their feathers become soft and poofy |
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| Buying chicks looks like serious business in this photo. Definitely the photographer was not referring to the chickens as "chicki-doos" at this moment. |
