They might be giants, but we might be crazy!!

Where to start? Our tiny barred rock baby is dead. I'm not 100% sure that Little Brown killed it, but I'm not sure that he didn't. We put LB back into the pen and things seemed to be going well. After making the decision to leave him in with everyone overnight (a bad decision) we woke up yesterday morning to a dead chicky. I was really sad. There was crying. It's not like I have deep feelings for these chickens, or even much of a relationship, but its still hard to deal with death, especially among babies.....of any kind. So, Little Brown is back in solitary and we're gonna see if our neighbors who also have chickens might want him/her. He still could be a her!

Anyway....we decided to head over to Tractor Supply yesterday because they got their shipment of chicks in. In my head I was just going to get 2, maybe 3 more chicks to replace Little Brown, and the baby barred rock. Turns out Tractor Supply only sells them 6 at a time. So, we got 6 more chicks. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that makes us crazy!! lol Currently we have 11 chickens living in our kitchen!! But.....one (LB) is getting re-homed, somewhere, and one of the new chicks that we got looks like it's gonna die.....not all of them make it, it's just the way it is.

I picked out 3 white leghorns and 3 black australorps. It's one of the white leghorns that doesn't seem to be doing very well. I'm still hoping that she pulls through, but I have had to force it to drink water by dipping it's beak into the trough, and I haven't seen it eat anything. I can't force it to eat unfortunately. I read that egg yolk is actually really good for them (I know, twisted huh?!) so I put some in the pen, and after Charlotte's morning nap we're gonna go get some electrolytes to put in their water.....maybe some poly-vi-sol as well. I'm gonna try whatever I can, but the little one may not make it anyway. But 9 chickens wouldn't be a bad number!

We originally put the chicks in with Lucky (the barred rock survivor) but after a little while of being badgered by babies she wanted out, so we moved her in with the 3 Rhode Island Red chicks and they did great together. The Reds actually let Lucky sleep with them last night which is a wonderful sign that they are accepting her. Here are our new babies:


Just to show how tiny these new chicks are, this littke Leghorn (who I've named Houdini) kept finding ways to get into the big girls pen....She thought she was a big girl too! lol

So, right now we have 3 Rhode Island Reds, 1 Barred Rock, 3 Black Australorps, and 3 (more than likely 2) White Leghorns. If all of them are pullets (here's hoping....fingers crossed) they all lay large eggs, the Leghorns are the only ones that will lay white eggs, the rest are brown. Here's what they will look like as adult HENS:

Black Australorp

White Leghorn

Barred Rock

Rhode Island Red

We are going to have one interesting spring here on the Schultz family farm!! Keep your fingers crossed that we don't lose any more babies, and that when it comes time to integrate them all into an outside coop that they can figure out how to get along.