Yesterday we received six adorable baby chicks in the mail... OMG they are so CUTE! We ordered hens, but my wife and our youngest daughter already suspect that one is a rooster. That will make life interesting... not that life with 5 cats and 6 chickens won't be interesting enough already!
Our plan is to put them in a chicken tractor, which is basically a coop on wheels. This will allow us to move them around the yard, giving the chickens a new area to scour for bugs and fresh turf to fertilize every few days. Our chicken tractor is currently in the design phase, which is code for "I haven't built it yet."
There are about 2,000 free chicken coop plans available on the Internet, most of which cost around $20. You can spend a lifetime researching plans to come up with the perfect design. I've researched this to the point where I'm tempted to get a big pile of wood and chicken wire and just wing it.
The end game in our plan is fresh eggs - according to the breeder these will be the best and most nutritious eggs we have ever eaten. Thank goodness we weren't planning to raise them for fryers or my wife's delicious chicken soup. It is only day one and I can already tell you that would never happen.
I sat up with them last night until 1 am, making sure their cage was at just the right temperature (90 degrees). Ok, so I was also bonding with them a little. My wife, Barb, kissed me goodbye this morning and said, "take good care of the babies." And that's what I have been doing all day - clearing the wood shavings from their water dish, checking the thermometer every 20 minutes and making sure they have plenty of food.
The place we bought them from really did their market research when they chose the name for their enterprise... the place is called "My Pet Chicken."
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Dad - you forgot to mention that you and Dolly are calling them "the adorables!" I can't wait to see them. :)
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