My husband and daughter ordered 25 pullet run chicks from Hoffman Hatchery. Pullet run means the chicks are female. Straight run means you get what hatched and what they send you. Since, we are raising chickens to be layers, we wanted all femle. Unfortunately, they waited until February to place their order, so our chicks didn’t come until the first week of May. This worked out in terms of the weather here this spring, but it means we won’t have fresh eggs until September/October.
The chicks
Bob and Sarah ordered:
5 Buff Brahmas
5 Dominiques
5 Rhode Island Red
10 Buff Orpingtons
Dominiques are considered Heritage chickens, meaning they are one of the first kind of chicken to be raised in America. Dominiques are known to be hardy and Sarah also liked their black and white speckles.
Buff Orpingtons are known to be broody, meaning good mother hens. Bob and Sarah are hoping to get a rooster so that the chickens will hatch their own young and the flock will be replenished in this way, rather than ordering new chicks.
Teaching a new chick how to drink water
Chicks come in a cardboard box through the United States Postal Service. When the Post Office called, Bob went and picked the chicks up very early in the morning. We opened the cardboard box inside our handmade brooder box and each chick had her beak dipped into the waterer and the feeder.
Bob did make the mistake of using a white heat lamp. But this didn’t become a problem until the chicks were about two weeks old. Then they started pecking each other. We isolated the pecked ones into a straw-filled bathtub and sprayed their wounds with Blu-Kote. All chicks bottoms were then coated with a mixture of vaseline and cayenne pepper. Then we built an outdoor playpen in my not yet planted garden. AND, switched the heat light to a red one.
- A Dominique
It took a couple of days for the chicks to work out their cabin fever on the bugs and weeds in the garden and we hurried to complete the chicken coop and yard. It was still cold at night, so the chicks had to go back in their brooder box with the heat lamp and with their butts loobed with hot sauce. They moved into their coop on Memorial Day.
We have lost three of the twenty-five chicks. One died fairly soon after we got them and the next a week later, both Buff Orpingtons. Then a Rhode Island Red died suddenly and unexplicably after living in their new coop and new yard for several weeks.
