New Chicks!

It's finally that inevitable time. Time to get rid of old chickens and refresh with new chicks. I resist this as long as possible, because I get attached to my chickens. And even though some of mine are 8 years old, they are still healthy, happy, and lay fairly well. My husband has asked me why I don't just do away with them when they are 3 years old, and passed their prime laying age. I could fill the freezer with meat and raise new layers at the same time. But I just can't. I have no problem with butchering roosters, but the hens have been laying all that time. I can't imagine taking their best years and then culling them because they had grown older and can't do as much as before. So, what to do? Last time I needed to completely refill my chicken house, I put out an ad stating that I had a flock of over-age hens who were wonderful pets and still gave the occasional egg that needed a good home. The next day I had a mom, dad, and little boy come to get them just for the joy of having some yard birds to watch peck about. It was a win/win situation for those gals.

And now I have chicks. It is so exciting picking out the most perfect fluff-babies! Here I have three banties, which are some of my favorite chickens. They are tiny birds that lay eggs half the size of a regular chicken egg. Bantam chicks only come "straight-run", which means they are not sexed, so you don't know if you will be getting a boy or a girl. Thus it was exceedingly important that these babies have androgynous names, that way they would still work no matter what they turned out to be. I know the importance of this because my son, Seth, had the most adorable. shiny black bantam and he named her Mary. After almost a year had passed we realized the critter was a rooster ,and he was Mr. Mary ever after! The little light colored baby at upper right is Clementine, Clem if it turns out to be a boy. The quail colored one to the left is Marion. We had both a man and a woman named that in church, so I know it fits. The little black one is a feather-foot, just look at those adorable fluffy shanks below! It made me think of how the British King Edward was called Long-Shanks. So my chick is Willa Fluffshanks, to become Will if necessary. I told you, naming babies is complicated and arduous task ;)

I also got a Rhode Island Red and two Barred Rocks, they are the three to the left. The yellow is Petunia, and the two black Rocks are Milly and Tilly.

 I love to see chicks sleep. They can literally fall asleep standing up and just sort of wilt over like putty. It's a sleep-where-you-fall-over kinda situation...

 To clean their box every day I would have my son, Will, hold and love on them. If he wasn't home, I would have to put them in a mixing bowl to keep them corralled. They would get so very quiet in the bowl and turn in all directions. They could not believe how much "world" there was outside of their box!

You know they have outgrown their box when you walk by and see one very cheekily perched on the top, looking arrogantly down on its brethren.

 And so they went down to the barn to have more room to run and grow until they are big enough to go to the real chicken pen. My moma and I had also been wanting some Araucana chicks. These are some of my favorite chickens to raise because their beautiful blue eggs give me so much joy. Moma found out that a shipment was in and so I ended up with three more babies. They were younger than everyone else, but not any smaller than my banties at the time. The adorable baby below is my favorite. I love her color, and her fuzzy hillbilly beard! I named her Mahogany, because she is just the color of the wood. Pop wanted to know if she was "Hog" for short! ;)

 Her sisters also got tree names- left is Maple, right is Hazel.

And so there are my sweet fluff-babies, growing new feathers and getting feistier every day. The time will soon come for my old chickens to retire, and these to take their place. In the meantime, I'm feeling sentimental and giving the old gals lots of treats...