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Meet Our 5 Sweet New Baby Chicks, Quick!

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 We announced awhile back that we decided to add to our chicken flock, but there was a little wait.
Well, our day-old sweet new baby chicks just arrived! 
There are few things sweeter than opening a box of brand new baby chicks! If you opened the box with us via video on our Facebook Page,  (<– watch here), you know just what we mean!  We’ve been so excited to get them, and we’re loving having them here.
Most of them still have their little egg-tooth too, and well, we’re all smitten with every one of them, already.

So today we are going to just briefly share with you their photos, names, breeds, and egg colors! 
And also, what they will look like, for the most part, when they are all-grown-up!

 

A Word on Naming Them

You may know that for our first-chicks-ever (one-day-old chicks we received just like this, in 2014), the name-theme we were running with was towns we had personal ties to. When we allowed those chickens to have offspring with our rooster the following spring, we went with names of personally-relevant streets in those towns. (From the coinciding towns, of course.)

This time, with this order of sweet chicks, we have no consistent theme for names!  So, don’t expect that. We’ve got a couple of spices, a couple of shrub/trees, and one more street!  We roll unpredictably like that.

And God-willing there will be NO boys/roosters! We did order to have them vent-sexed, to be sure (ha haha!) we get females again. But ummm, well, last time (our first order), there were 2 out of 8 mis-sexed chicks.  (We kept 1, even though we never intended to have a rooster. We did love our time with Weymouth.) And then when their offspring were born, 5 hatched, and 3 were boys/roosters!  We kid you freakin’-not. So, we’ve had our share of finding homes for roosters. 
We are counting on having ALL GIRLS with these chicks! Please, Lord.

. . . . . .

Alright, are you ready to meet the new chicks, one by one?

 


“Juniper”
Juniper is a Blue Easter Egger. Isn’t she just a doll?! She is expected to lay blue or green eggs. We can’t wait to see her eggs!  Because whatever color the first egg is, is what that Easter Egger will always lay. I’m sure we’ll show the first egg on our Facebook Page and or our InstaGram. So yeah, follow us theres. (Typo on purpose.)
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We Lost Our First Chicken to a Predator | The Interesting Story of When and How

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DISCLAIMER:
This post was published with special permission from one of our two teen triplet boys, Shane, who is featured in this real life story of ours quite a bit.  He read it and approved it.  I have *always* checked with my kids before sharing their business or photos anywhere online. It’s just the right thing to do.  –  Laura

–

It finally happened on a late Saturday afternoon, this past December, actually.  After keeping chickens for nearly 2 and 1/2 years, a predator finally got one. And it was all kinds of sad. Of all of the ways such a loss could have gone down, and any chicken it could have gone down with, it was about as sad as it could get, if you ask us.

(Just a picture of our chickens from last year, for your enjoyment.)

Before we tell the sad little tale, we have to say first, that we still maintain that our predator deterrent set-up has been working very well! It was never meant to be, nor going to be, predator-proof.  But it has definitely done it’s job well in serving it’s intended purpose, in deterring hawks, especially.  It was only a matter of time though, that a more unusual situation with a predator would arise, and well….that time came.

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We Are Back! Come See Our Brand New Look!

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It’s been 7 months today, since our last post, while I worked on a great big work project. But we are back now, ready to really rock and roll again! And with a whole new brand design look, too! What do you think? Do you love our [Read more…]

The Unexpected Death of Our Rooster

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Doesn’t it figure, that not even a week after finding a new home for our over-abundance of roosters from our hatch, did we face the very unexpected death of our rooster, ‘Weymouth’, who we have had for over a year?  We somehow went from having too many roosters, to none, in no time flat.  And it’s honestly left us scratching our heads.

In our last blog post about the flock, in September, we played a fun (and super easy) guessing game, determining how many birds from our new hatch in the spring, turned out to be roosters. Roosters, mind you, that we could not keep, because we already had one, that we never had intended on having, but ended up with anyway. The new tally came to 3 out of 5 more roosters. We knew they couldn’t stay, and we updated at our Facebook Page ( < we invite you to ‘Like’ it) when we did indeed find a new home for them all together.  A nice guy who was very excited to use all three of them for breeding, took them.

Not even a week later, our big, beautiful healthy rooster, who has been the head of our flock, started our day like any other, crowing up a storm. And then in a matter of moments, he was gone.

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Hen or Rooster? Come Play the Guessing Game with Us!

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Determining if growing baby chickens are ultimately a hen (female) or a rooster (male) is an age old guessing game of any breeding chicken-keepers and farmers. (A game we’re going to let you play right here with us, today!!)  Some are much better at it than others! Some could probably even be considered experts. But….that wouldn’t be us. We had our first go at the game when, after ordering and receiving our very first 8 vent-sexed chicks, in July 2014.  We had ordered vent-sexed chicks, to be sure we only got females, because there was no-way, no-how, we could have a rooster around here. So the adorable chicks arrived, and we were having a great time caring for them.

But then some suspicious things came about. Like, what sounded very much like a little inexperienced crowing, at only 4 weeks old! That got us worried, and researching, to learn about how to identify very young chickens as a hen or rooster. So we had our suspicions, and in a little more time there was no doubt that ONE bird (blogged about here in “Our 8 Four Week Old Chicks, and One Sad Surprise”), and then a SECOND (just blabbed out on our Facebook Page), of our 8 vent-sexed birds (supposed hens) were indeed roosters.  Two roosters, out of our 8 ordered chicks, vent-sexed to be assure females. Didn’t it figure?

What Became of the Roosters

Although it was definitely a plan to never have a rooster, since we live in fairly close proximity to neighbors, guess what? One of those roosters still lives here. It’s working out so far. He is a very big, beautiful, and traditional looking Welsummer. The other unfortunately had to go, and it broke my heart. It was my favorite. He was an Americauna Easter Egger, that very much looked and acted like the coolest hawk, ever. To see what a stunning bird he was, and find out why he had to go, you can check out this post called “Goodbye, Boston”.  That was his name; Boston. I know. A cool name, too, right? And it was sentimental, as Boston is the big city where our triplets were born. I was so sad to let him go for all of those reasons, but I also knew I was also never going to get any beautiful blueish or blue-green eggs, from a rooster. And that’s why I wanted an Easter Egger in the first place.

Anyway, if you follow us, you know we let the hens sit on some eggs this past spring, instead of collecting them one day, to see what happened. This bright idea was spawn from how terrible I felt for my kids, because [Read more…]


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