Wow, what a whirlwind week! We got over 100 chicks in the mail. About 25 of them are laying hens, about 75 (or 77) of them are meat birds, and we got two roosters. You’ll be able to spot one of them in our pictures, as he’s the only black on in the bunch!
We got them in our brooder, with food and water, and started the journey of raising our own protein!
Things we didn’t expect: 1) how much they would eat right off the bat. We didn’t give them enough food the first few days to make it all the way through the day. Thankfully, we were checking them obsessively, so we were able to refill their food trays at lunchtime.
2) How hot it would get in the brooder. It’s in the 90s here in June in Georgia, so the brooder was scorching. But opening the built in windows helped a ton.
3) How fast they would go through water. We had to add a third water jug just a week in, because they were going through the two original ones in under a day.
We’ve just *almost* finished the laying hens’ Chickshaw (from Justin Rhodes). Next we have to finalize the chicken tractor out of the Polyface Designs book. We’ve got a week!
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