I'm a mommy! [pic of course]

[AccountingDrone]

Chicks really are adorable little bundles of shit production They eat their weight in chick mash every day and what goes in must come out the other end ... They are now upstairs in the barn - my roomie broods them in her studio, as she has cockatiels and keeps the barn way warmer than we like to be.

And we have about a week until the purple guinea fowls arrive ... all 30 of them =)

We like to sit out on the deck and watch the poultry in the evenings.

We have geese also, and they are like a gaggle of kindergardeners =)

[MaggieTheCat]

Very cute! <3 I remember one time, back when I worked at the pet warehouse, I was walking into work one day around mid-morning and saw one of the managers pull into the parking lot next to me after having been out to get the mail...she asked if I could help her with something then gestured me over to her car and said "listen to this..." As I got closer I heard, peep peep peep! Turns out one of the owners had ordered a box of little chicks! They were soooo cute.

[tropicsgoddess]

Awww!!They're soooo CUTE!

[AccountingDrone]

Neighbors? Where do you live?

And they are rare for a few reasons - they are bantams - not great egg layers and half or less the size of most common chooks. They are actually what many of the modern egg layers or broilers are bread up from.

They are almost all varieties of cochins - originally from china, really only made it to the US about 200 years ago, with an old european type, and one bred here in the US.

http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/day_..._chickens.html
we got Sultan which i an americanization of a turkish bird, Golden Laced, Birchen Cochins, White Frizzle and Red Pyle [which are a european bantam]

Banties are not common because they are purely hobbyist birds - not enough eggs nor enough meat for commercial success.

[Exaspera]

It is sort of like having a bunch of kindergardeners in feathers around here.

What a cute, clever way to put it.

[Squeaksmyalias]

* hugs AccountingDrone* you are my kinda gal, BTW I forgot to mention we are neighbors

[Green_Fairy]

omg so cute!!

My batch of 25 mixed rare/unusual chicks just arrived!

so...what makes them rare/unusual?

[AccountingDrone]

Yea I was an Vo-Ag kid so we were set up to raise them, Bob alone was easy, we had issues with a group we try to raise...it wasn't pretty. We had to show up very early in the morning before the freshman showed up to clean up dead bodies. Lesson learned, they need a LOT more space then we expected. Also I'm pretty much convinced there was a chicken killer among them and it was the last fat hen left...I didn't trust her.

That's great you bring them into a school, makes me sad when kids have never been near farm animals.

When I had sheep I would run lamb over now and then, with a tarp for the droppings and a few flakes of hay for snack and atmosphere =)

[Squeaksmyalias]

Yea I was an Vo-Ag kid so we were set up to raise them, Bob alone was easy, we had issues with a group we try to raise...it wasn't pretty. We had to show up very early in the morning before the freshman showed up to clean up dead bodies. Lesson learned, they need a LOT more space then we expected. Also I'm pretty much convinced there was a chicken killer among them and it was the last fat hen left...I didn't trust her.

That's great you bring them into a school, makes me sad when kids have never been near farm animals.

[AccountingDrone]

chickens do make fun pets - we took one of my chooks to the local school for a kindergarden teacher to use for show and tell... in a leftover bird cage =) one of the kids who had a keet asked if we kept her in the house like that =)

I had a teacher ask if we could give them some eggs to hatch so the kids could raise it as a class pet ... and I had to gently explain that the white hall cross that we had eggs for at the time would get to be about 9 pounds in 3 months ... they got a hamster. If I had quail, it would have been great but chickens get too large too fast to really work out. Maybe one of the tiny bantam types, I had a full grown bantam hen a few years ago that was the size of a rock cornish game hen [it was an old english bantam, dainty little thing named Houdini for her ability to escape the coop at will. I think she would teleport through the walls and wire!]

[lordlundar]

and loud ... 25 going peep peep peep ... loud little buggers =)

This just reminded me of the episode of Dirty Jobs with the chicken catchers in Florida. A baby chick gave away his position by not shutting it's trap.

[Squeaksmyalias]

*sniffle* I miss my Bob, I had one in high school a friend gave me and another friend to raise. Bob was a hen...but she was AWESOME. For a hen who spent a lot of time indoors the fox that kept picking off the other chickens she moved in with never got her, she died at because of old age.

Bob even made it into our high school's year book! I'm so proud.

*Gently huggles the wittle chicks*

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Now that's precious as can be. *drooling and resisting urge to reach through the Internet to take a couple of the chicks*

I'm not sure how my cats would react to having something like that around the house, but they do sound like a lot of fun.

[AccountingDrone]

We raise chickens for eggs and meat, and the fun of watching them. They actually do make fun pets if they are handled frequently enough to get accustomed to humans. Actually, we also have roman and emden geese, and an indian runner duck that seems to think it is a goose. It is sort of like having a bunch of kindergardeners in feathers around here.

We are also getting 30 purple guinea fowls in a few weeks - just enough time to move the chickens out of the acute brooding phase to where they don't need quite as much attention.

Since we expanded the number of chooks, we are building a new chicken house for them in a different part of the field, with a larger yard. Right now I am trying to figure out where the roll or poultry netting went to last fall

[Exaspera]

Awwww! What little cuties! What do you plan to do with them?