On July 16th, after over 21 days of incubating fertilized eggs, chicks began to hatch! It was a glorious day of firsts for our homestead. Hubby and I had never gone through this before, so we didn’t know what to expect. Actually, hubby was out of town for a few days when the chicks began to hatch, so I was constantly texting him with what was happening.
Out of 30 fertile eggs, 12 of them hatched on Monday, July
16th. I got home from work to
see a bunch of peeps under Latte, our broody hen.
Over the next week, we had a couple more peeps hatch each
day. Total, 19 chickens hatched from the
fertilized eggs we received. This could
have been due to a couple of reasons: Some of the eggs may not have been
fertile or I didn’t incubate the ones inside properly. Latte was not able to lay on all of the eggs
we had, so we bought an incubator to incubate half of them indoors.
Once the peeps hatched and got their fluff, we brought them
inside to a tempertature controlled area of the house under a heat lamp. It was such a blast to watch them fumble
around the first few days, and adding a few more to the mix every day or two.
Unfortunately, a couple died unexpectedly the first week: one
had a medical complication that I was unable to doctor up and one was a runt
whose legs and beak were growing, but it’s body wasn’t growing properly. Let me tell you…chicks are pigs!
They eat so much!! After the
first week, they tripled in size. I had
to find another place to keep them so they had some room to roam around. We ended up using an unused dog cage that we
had. I put leaves in the bottom (free!)
and we set up house for the chicky babies.
They stayed in this area for approximately 3 weeks until they had all
their feathers and it was time to move them outside.
Even though we have a chicken coop that would accommodate
all of our chickens, we were afraid the hens would peck the chicks to
death. Even when we experimented with
the chicks outside, the hens were not
fond of the chicky babies! Hubby was
gracious enough to build a coop to keep the chicky babies away from harm, but
acclamate to the weather.
I realize that the chick coop is not the most attractive coop
on the market, but it was free and it serves it’s purpose. (Please note: Hubby built a door for it!) We decided that once we integrate the chicks
into the hen’s coop, we will eventually use the chick house as a breeding shack
in the future. We are calling it “The
Love Shack.”
 |
| Mocha not sure what to make of the curious chicky baby |
Unfortunately, when the chicks were 6 ½ weeks old, we lost
another to a hawk outside. We are at 14
chicks right now and I hope we don’t lose any more.
The chicks are 3 months old now, and to date, I cannot
figure out which is a hen and which is a roo.
From what I’ve read, I may have to wait another few months or wait until
they start crowing! I have a feeling
that we have 4 roo’s, but don’t quote me on that.
 |
| Chicky Babies Today: 3 months old |
I will admit to sitting outside and watching all the
chickens run around their fenced in area for hours on end. They are coexisting outside just fine, but I
am continually finding the hens stealing the chick’s food! They are pretty much both the same size right
now with some of the chicky babies being bigger than our 1 ½ year old hens!
 |
| Two chicks and a hen (on the way left). They are pretty much the same size! |
If you are able to own backyard hens, I highly recommend
it. Not only do they provide food for
the table, they make great pets.
Wow, they sure grew! And fast too.
ReplyDeleteYes, they did! The big joke in the beginning was that I could watch them grow.
Delete