We are full swing into springtime! The pool water is already a lovely 78 degrees and I think the first official swim of the season will be this weekend after my first half marathon!
As y’all saw a couple posts back, we have baby chicks now! I’ve begged my sweet hubby for years for them and he finally obliged after our dear neighbor gave two chicks to the boys. He’s had chickens as long as we’ve been neighbors (at least 7 years) and we love helping with them when he’s out of town. Farm fresh eggs from free range hens cannot be beat!
This is how our brood has grown…
We began with 2 Easter Eggers from our neighbor, Steve. They will lay blue/green eggs and are usually sweet birds. The one we call Mohawk is especially sweet. Speedy is more brown and, as her name implies, does not like to get caught!
Then, we added 6 Cornish Rocks to those from my friend, Mandy. We knew we weren’t going to keep all 6 so we gave 3 of those to Steve the next day. He already has a dozen or so of those.
We were sitting pretty with 5 until I began my backyard chicken research. I learned that the Cornish Rocks aren’t the most docile hens and are huge when full grown (they also aren’t the best of layers either). We don’t have an enormous coop…probably enough for 4-5 medium sized chickens…and enough room for about 2 Cornish Rocks. So, after I learned that and those 3 Cornish Rocks started eating all the food we decided to give those to Steve, also. (I must add that he has an insane coop set up for them and has more than enough room for 30 or more. To him, the more the merrier!)
But, then I went into Tractor Supply one day to get more feed when I saw that they had some Barred Plymouth Rock chicks in. Oooooo….I’ve dreamt about those sweet babies! They are friendly, funny and great layers of large brown eggs! So, y’all know I had to get them! We can home with a bag of feed and 6 more chicks. ;)
For about a week now we’ve had our 8 (6 Barred Plymouth Rocks & 2 Easter Eggers), but just as soon as Scott left to go to Florida for three days with work on Easter Sunday afternoon…a hawk killed one of my baby Plymouth Rocks. I guess if there ever was a good day to die…Easter was it. Can you even imagine the celebration in Heaven on Easter?!?!? :) Our neighbor came down to help us get it’s little body out of the run and bury it. I’d be darned if that hawk got to eat my baby chick, too!
This hawk had guts like I’ve never seen! He literally sat at the fence line of the run and waited for one baby to get close enough for it to try to grab it with it’s claw. The top is fenced in, too, so that was the only way the hawk could get close. I guess once it figured out it couldn’t get it’s victim out of the fence- it decided to try again because we saw it still sitting there waiting for the next chick to get close.
Thankfully, they had all huddled up away from the hawk. Wyatt babysat them until they went into their coop promptly at 7:45. I could never manage a schedule with my own children but these chicks are quite punctual with their bedtime! He loves playing with them and has named about all of them by now. Snuggles is the one in the 2nd picture down…she’s the smallest of the Rocks and always the first one to come to you to be held.
Here they are!
I look forward to documenting how they grow as their feathers come in. Our Easter Eggers (Speedy & Mohawk…Mohawk is the one Wyatt is holding in the above picture) are starting to go through that weird stage and have more of their feathers already but they are about 2 weeks older than the Plymouth Rocks. I can’t wait to see our Rocks grow…here’s an idea of what they’ll look like! :)
Aren’t they beautiful? Scott is getting such a kick out of me being a chicken farmer! He knew it was bound to happen! :)
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