cheep cheep

Easter weekend we picked up 8 new pets......baby chicks! I can't believe it's been about 3 weeks and I haven't posted anything about them, but life has been crazy. So, anyway....here's the post. :o) We ended up getting 8 chicks because they were straight run which means not sexed, so we didn't want to just get 4 and have them all turn out to be roos. We really only want 4 or 5 hens which should keep us in eggs for the entire year. Our solution to having too many chickens?? If they are roos, we're going to either raise them till about 8 weeks and then eat them, or we'll give them away. If they all turn out to be hens, we'll probably sell the ones we don't want to keep. At this point though, I'm pretty sure that we have at least 2 roos, but only time will tell. We ended up getting 4 rhode island reds and 4 white plymouth rocks. Both breeds will produce medium to large brown eggs, and both are supposed to be pretty friendly, which is what we are looking for in pet chickens. Although, I must say that I'm skeptical about the rhode island reds actually being rhode island reds, and Dan and I think that the plymouth rocks might be bantams.....they are just so little compared to our huge reds. Again.....we'll have to wait and see. We also decided to go with slightly older chicks instead of the oh-so-adorable 1-2 day old babies because we found out last time that often times the little bitty ones get sick, or don't handle transportation well and they die. Our chicks were about 2 weeks old when we got them. I do know that the girls are loving the chickens, and I am loving that they are in the garage and not my kitchen this time around!! I'll update as things progress.....keep your fingers crossed that more than half of our chicks are female!

Chicks when we got them (approx. 2 weeks old)

Chicks now (approx. 5-6 weeks old)