I have wanted chickens for many MANY years.
It has never been the right time, until last Sunday! We tend to do big animal things like this spontaneously and it works well for us. We drove to Tractor Supply to see what they had and came home with 8 baby chicks! The first 8 were Black Sexlinks {I could not get over the name when I first heard it – total chicken novice here}.
We fell in love instantly, got their brooder set up in a box we had and just stared at their cuteness. And their poop. They poop a lot.
Our daughter LOVES these chicks. Although the final decision to actually take the plunge came from our oldest son, who is almost 16. He decided he wanted to raise chickens, which worked really well with my I really want chickens plan. Pac agreed to take care of them and we agreed to pay for them and help. Ladybug agreed to love them. A LOT.
It was warm one day last week so we took them outside a few at a time to explore.
Sadly one of our original 8 didn’t make it. We could see that she was weak and I hand fed/watered her and read everything and did everything I could figure out to help her but she left us one evening.
So, we did what any new chicken owner would do. We went out and got more.
We wanted 1 more, but they are only sold in sets of 4. Our local store only had straight runs {which I have now learned means boys and girls, “unsexed”}, and we didn’t want any roosters.
We called the store about 20 minutes away and they had TONS of pullets {girls} so we drove immediately! They had about 5 different kinds to choose from so we let our oldest son choose based on his research. He chose 2 Rhode Island Reds and 2 Barred Rocks. We drove away and he said, “Should we maybe get one more, just in case – for an even dozen?” Why not? We turned around, grabbed one more Barred Rock and headed home with our 5 new chicks.
They fit right in with the others since they were about a week apart in age, and we began enjoying these new girls tremendously! It was especially fun to add the two red ones since they look so different!
Once these gals were added the floor space in the box seemed too small so we made our own nipple water bottle, thanks to an idea from a friend! It worked wonderfully and only took them about an hour to figure out!
Even with that bit of extra floor space, I realized that these 12 ladies were going to grow out of their brooder box quickly so I set to work on a DIY brooder that will hopefully hold them until they move to the coop. I looked at a few ideas online and then just came up with my own version!
While I was inside getting the baby box together, the guys were outside building the big girl coop! We used all recycled material that we had gathered, the only thing we had to buy was some roofing, some 2x4s and two posts!
They have a lot more to do with the coop, but it is a great start!
Here’s all of the girls, the ones with the white background are the new ones, about a week younger than the others.
Only a few have names so far, we are working on the others.
See the chickens here #chickens4thehinsons