meet our chickens!

Ever since we moved out here, I have wanted to raise some chickens. We would love to have some layers for eggs, but we don't have a great place to keep them & I know that I would be so annoyed having to trek back to the shed all winter through the snow to take care of them. So, we decided to get some broilers! The boys are big enough where they can help do the "chores" and in the end, we should have lots of homegrown chicken.  They also will be finished in about 8 weeks so it's pretty short term.  We originally planned to get 25-30 because that seemed like a nice, manageable number. However, after doing some checking, the local processor has a 50 bird minimum unless you want to pay a flat fee (which figures out to be the price for 50 birds) so our number doubled :)


Last Monday the boys and I went to look at the baby chicks & they were sold out. They told us they were getting some later in the day so we decided to go back that night and get some before they were gone. They had gotten over 700 in that afternoon and they were completely sold out again by 6pm. :(  They told us that they were getting another shipment on Thursday so we reserved 60 of them. The boys were so excited to pick them up, it was the fastest we've gotten out of the house in the morning in a looooong time. ("The sooner mom gets to work, the sooner we can go get the chicks!") We went and picked them up & they gave us a couple of extra just in case so we ended up with 62.

 

 

Had to add another heat lamp since it's still too cold out.

I'm guessing the ones who sleep with their heads in the feeders will be good growers.

Currently, they are living in the shop part of the shed in the swimming pool. We have lost 3 of them so we are down to 59. The boys are loving feeding & watering them. They aren't super interested in holding them but they love going out to check on them all of the time.

Charlie took 5 into school the morning after we got them to show them off to his class. He asked his teacher earlier in the week if she would be "so excited if I brought baby chicks into the class." haha. He told his classmates all about his baby chicks including "they're really tiny now, but soon they'll be big & fat & then we're going to eat them!"