Chicks part deux

Now that they're about a month old, I figured we should finally post something about our new chickens.  We lost our first batch of chickens to what we believe was a fox, and we're ready to look to the future of new, healthy chickens!

We ordered 8 new chickens from My Pet Chicken, and we decided to get all new varieties so as to start fresh.  The chickens arrived on a Tuesday at about noon (less than 24 hrs after they left the hatchery), and two of them were dead when we picked them up.  One of them didn't look too hot, and it died over night.  Then, a fourth one died on Thursday.  This hatchery refunds you for losses, but this was ridiculous...especially considering how quickly they arrived!  The woman on the phone was very nice, and they refunded our losses and paid for shipping us new chickens.  Because of order minimums, we ordered 8 more chickens -- these also arrived less than 24 hrs after leaving the hatchery.....and two of them were dead on arrival.  W.T.F.  According to the website and the customer service people, they only see deaths about 1% of the time -- hmmmm.

Despite our rough start, we have 10 happy healthy chickens....

Here's a group of 5 on the day they arrived. :)

They're a bit older now, though...

This is Freckles, a Barred Rock -- named by our nephew. :)

This is Nina, another Barred Rock.

Sheila -- she's a White Cochin.  She is the runt of the bunch, but she makes up for it with attitude. She has feathers on her feet and has stolen our hearts.

This is Chewy, aka Fluffy Butt, aka Miss Featherbottom, aka Dr. Featherbottom, Esq. She's a Light Brahma and obviously also has feathers on her feet.

This is Sal, a Speckled Sussex.  So beautiful as adults.

This is Amy, another Speckled Sussex.  She runs in circles....yeah.

This babe needs a name.  She's a Speckled Sussex as well.

This is Louis, another Speckled Sussex.  She was exploring from day 1.

This is Maren, a Silver Cuckoo Maran.  Her eggs could be dark chocolate brown!

Last, but certainly not least, this is DiDi.  She's a Speckled Sussex as well.

We're really happy with our new ladies, and they're starting to get really sassy.  They've been spending all day outside in the temporary (and newly reenforced) chicken pen, and they're loving it.  We spend every early evening having cocktails and chicken time -- we sit in the grass rehashing the day's work and catching bugs to feed to the chickens.  We are happy to report that they love green heads, ticks, slugs, and Japanese beetles.

We're anxious for them to grow into fully feathered adults so we can introduce them to the ducks and have all our birds living full time outside.  The introduction is sure to produce at least one blog post -- it could get interesting...