Chicken Day!

We got four baby chickens today. 

It's something we've talked about for years. We almost got some last spring but I was pregnant, our house was in escrow, and we decided not to increase our responsibilities too much, too fast.  But now we own our house, we have plenty of extra space, and the baby is 8 months old - she's a lot of work but not so much that we can't handle a flock of chickens.

So my husband went to a class on backyard chicken keeping and brought home these little fuzzballs. They're four days old, and they came from a breeder in New Mexico. They're so cute that I decided to start blogging again.

All four chicks are different varieties, which is why they all look different. The stripey, sassy-looking one is an Ameraucana. The others are a Buff Cochin, Cuckoo Maran, and Blue Andalusian. If they are all hens and they all survive, we'll have eggs that are blue-green, light brown, dark brown, and white.

They arrived at our house in this fancy lightbulb box. It's apparently safer and warmer for them to travel in tight quarters.

For now, they're living in a brooder box in the basement. It's just a cardboard box with pine shavings, a special chicken waterer, a feeder full of chick food, and a heat lamp. All of this stuff was provided at the chicken class, which is pretty cool. They'll stay inside for 4-7 weeks before moving outside to a coop (which we don't have yet).

Things to be aware of if you think you want chickens and think you might start with babies:

• It takes about 6 months before you really know if they're male or female (these chicks have been sexed and there's a guaranteed 90% accuracy rate, so with 4 chicks, there's a 2 in 3 chance that they'll all be female). We don't want any roosters, so if any of these turn out to be male, we'll have to decide whether we are willing to kill it ourselves (and eat the cute little critter we've hand raised) or give it away on Craigslist (for someone else to kill and eat). 
• It's also going to be about 6 months before we get any eggs, which is kind of a bummer but I think the anticipation will be fun.
• Pasting Up. So... baby chickens will sometimes die after getting their butts plugged up with poop. In order to prevent our new baby chicks from "pasting up" and dying, their rear ends need to be checked frequently, and if things get clogged, you have to clean their little poopy butts. Tyler is in charge of poopy butt duty since I deal with 99% of the human baby's poopy butt. But if you can't handle poopy chicken butts, you might want to get adult chickens. (I will try to never type poopy butt ever again.)

I am quite sure there will be more chicken stories in my future....