Chicks

Chicks arrive from Postal Carrier

Quinn & Alex with new chicks

Today was the long awaited day for our baby chicks to arrive. Forty Five of them to be exact, except we had two casualties right out of the gate and then another one while I was writing this post (that might have been a child's fault, but we'll never know). Poor chickies. Our wonderful postal carrier (I'm P.C. here because I'm usually not and usually say mailman) Kathy, brought them to us today. This is a business venture for Quinn (aka - son #2), who can not wait to start selling eggs to make some $$$. Of course I told him it will be awhile before that starts happening, but he is excited and can't wait. He invested $100 of his own money to buy these chicks, even passing up the opportunity to spend that money on candy one day in the store. I guess he loves animals more than candy. That is truly a shocker for my Quinn who has a major sweet tooth.

Our newly constructed chicken coop

We have tried having chickens in the past with disastrous results. We have wild critters who love chicken! And they will do anything to get into the coop. After each lost chicken, we would tighten up the hatches only to succumb to loss again. So now we totally redid our coop and moved it to a new location. This baby is Fort Knox of Chicken Coops. If anything gets into this one, they win, we lose. We have wall to ceiling wire and buried chicken wire on the ground, so nothing should be able to dig its way in. So far so good! We have kept our 10 Bantums safe and are enjoying fresh eggs daily. Of course they are the size of a robin's egg, just kidding, they are larger than that. About half the size of a "normal" egg, so it takes two in place of one egg in a recipe.

The Lone Rooster

When we first acquired our current adult chickens, we had two escapees, a hen and a rooster. They were rather cute running around the yard. Then we were able to catch the hen and now she resides in the coop with the other layers. But now we have a lone rooster as you can see him in the picture above. I feel sorry for him with no one to keep him company anymore. We have three roosters already in the coop and really don't need another one in there. Catching him has proven futile, but maybe one day... Of course with these 42 new chicks, we will have to be adding onto our existing coop so they all will have plenty of room. Maybe the rooster can reside with them someday.