It’s Your Birthday, Little Chickens!

Twelve babies were born this week (so far!)

We did lose one early on, but the other baby chicks appear to be doing great. Some are pure Dominickers, but others are a mix of Dominicker and Copper Maran (Amigo).

What color eggs will those chickens lay?

There was a cricket in the coop, so Rocky threw it toward the mama, but it wasn’t long before one of the babies was running off with a cricket leg in its mouth. They’re a fast learning bunch, this one! Must be watching their Baby Einstein videos diligently.

Established flocks can be a little exclusive.

Rocky moved all the chicks from the nesting boxes to the nursery in the coop to keep little chicks from getting pecked or trampled by the adults. The babies can run under one of the slats to the big chicken coop and mingle with the rest of the flock, but always have access to the safety of the nursery. This helps it to be less of a shock when “all these new young chicks” show up in the coop one day.

Predator Danger Identified.

I didn’t realize there was a small hole between the nursery and the shed next door. On Friday, I caught one of the chicks crying in the shed and returned it to the nursery. If the chicks can get out, predators can get in. I’m going to run this by Rocky and get that hole plugged or blocked asap.

Yukon Cornelius (okay, okay, my husband!) shows me that this broody Dominicker is still sitting on eggs.

Any day now, honey.

You’ll notice our nesting boxes aren’t anything fancy. They came with the farm so we didn’t get to repurpose anything cool like this.

I love new life on the farm.

Every day is a chance to start over, make things right, make things better. We have seven laying hens, and they are paying for their own feed with the eggs we sell for $3.00 per dozen.

This hatching of baby chicks has the potential to almost double our egg production, assuming some of them will be roosters. They could potentially earn enough money to fund the purchase of goat feed until the goats start supporting themselves. Currently, they’re still just freeloaders.

We have discussed selling Noel, the patriarch of the goat family here, but he was a pet to begin with, so we’re reluctant. We have also discussed renting out our goats to eat poison ivy and other obnoxious weeds (kudzu, anyone?), but need T-Posts and Fencing in order to make that happen, and those are in short supply right now.

Also, it looks like Joy is about to kid again, and we’re expecting more than one, so we will have a milk goat soon. That moves “build a milk stand” up a little higher in Priority on our huge list of “Things To Do” on the farm. We could make butter, cheese, and enough soap to sell locally and these goats could start supporting themselves. Once I learn to milk a goat, that is.