Our chicks and ducklings from our 2018 April batch are almost grown.  Soon they will be producing eggs!  Can’t wait to see the first tiny egg in their pen.  This year we got a total of 15 chicks and 3 ducklings.  We didn’t plan on getting that many!  We started off getting 9 chicks: 2 plymouth, 2 ameraucana, 2 leg horns, and 3 california whites.  We then had a dog come onto our property, killing a duck and a chicken and injuring another chicken.  I happened to go to Tractor Supply to pick up a wagon we had ordered…if you are a chicken owner then you know I brought home 6 more chicks: 2 red sex links, 2 buff orpington, and 2 australorps.  😀 Sadly, Tractor Supply wouldn’t have anymore shipments of ducklings.  However, my husband learned that one of the Tractor Supply workers had ducks that just hatched.  We ended up getting 2 muscovy mixes and 1 mallard mix. Below I have a slide show of the chicks and ducklins.  The only chick I don’t have a good fluffy picture of is the leg horn.  When we bought them they were older, growing permanent feathers.  Instead I put in a picture of one of our leg horns from our 2017 batch.  They are identical to the california whites except california whites have black spots.

All of these chicks came from Tractor Supply.  We aimed to only get pullets, but this year we ended up with 2 roosters!  There were two workers handling the chick department.  When we picked out the Ameraucna chicks I pointed out that there were darker and lighter colors of the chicks.  We ended up getting one dark chick and one light chick.  The light chick ended up being a rooster.  Once we put those chicks into a box, the other worker helped us. We picked out another breed and she asked if that was it and I said I would like to have more Plymouth Rock chickens but I didn’t want any roosters since the only Plymouth Rocks they had were straight run (meaning male and female in the same tub).  The worker said she would be able to pick out the hens for us.  We ended up getting two because I didn’t want to increase my chance of getting a whole bunch of roosters.  I read online later that usually you can tell if a Plymouth Rock chick is a male or female by their coloring.  Needless to say, we had another rooster on our hands.

We brought home our chicks, set up the brooder which you can read about here.  With our chicks we have a process of where we keep our chicks and how long.  The chicks start off in my office.  This makes it easier in identifying pasty butt, here’s a link to my pasty butt video.  Pasty butt is where poop can cake up on a chicks’ butt, if not cleaned off then the chick will die.  Once they get to the age of being able to jump out of the brooder, fly around the office, etc. then we move them into a larger establishment in our basement

Office:

.   Chicks are settled in the brooder in my office.

 Silly chick you are not supposed to roost on the heat lamp.

The chicks stayed in the office several weeks. We used a large rubber maid tub to keep them in.

Basement:

After several weeks in the office, the chicks are moved to the basement!  First we moved them into a large dog kennel (shown above) and then a larger enclosure with fencing (shown below).  We added a small pool for the ducks.

Outside:

This is their first enclosure outside.  They have a roof with a tarp hanging on one side to block wind and rain.  Since colder weather is approaching we will either enclose this, making it a permanent coop until next spring, or we will build another coop else where.  We did have plans to make a new goat pen for our does and have another coop built by that pen.  However, our truck is broken down right now, making us go into a new direction.  You can see part of our lay out here.  I will keep everyone updated with our plans!