We Got Baby Chicks!

I have been dreaming of having chickens for quite some time now. We had them when I was a kid and it was great. Now that Spring is here, we decided to go for it!

We got 15 baby chicks with a variety of breeds. We chose:

Light Brahmas
Buff Orpingtons
Barred Rocks
Silver Laced Wyandottes
Americanas

Our local Post Office is not the most reliable one in the world, so I wasn’t surprised when we got a frantic call from a Postal worker Sunday night. He said that our baby chicks had been dropped off there and no one called us. He just happened to stop by there to pick something up and found them Thank Goodness!

Brian went to go pick them up and we got them quickly set up in a temporary home.

The little chicks are the sweetest things – I love watching them sleep!

We knew they didn’t have enough room in that plastic tub, so we moved them to a bigger reservoir around 36 hours later.

They seem much happier in this home, but I know they’ll outgrow it in a couple weeks and we’ll have to upgrade them again.

Unfortunately, we lost one of the Americanas on the third night. She was smaller than the rest of the chicks and spent a lot of time just laying around like this:

I tried to make sure she was eating and drinking and even tried separating her from the other chicks to no avail. Zoë and Kaylee have not noticed that there is a chick missing, so I haven’t said anything to them about it.

We initially got chick feed from the local feed store, but I was appalled when I read the ingredients. It’s mostly GMO corn and GMO soy.

I was fortunate to discover Scratch and Peck, which at the time was the only non-GMO Project Verified chicken feed. Their Naturally Free Starter Feed is both corn and soy free, so there’s no risk of cross-contamination from GMO fields. It looks very different from the GMO starter feed.

We also got some Chick Grit and Diatomaceous Earth. I have been sprinkling the chick grit on their food and they go crazy for it! They all run over as soon as I do it and it’s a feeding frenzy until it’s gone!

Our local feed store worked with me to bring Scratch & Peck feed in to buy locally, which was awesome. I just can’t imagine knowingly feeding our chickens the standard GMO feed.