WELCOME TO CHICKENS AT P2, 2021
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| Baby chicks, homeward bound from Tractor Supply Company |
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| Our custom made Walmart chicken brooder, note the Variac at lower right |
Today is Saturday March 6, 2021. We estimate the chicks were born on or around Saturday, February 27, 2021 so they are about a week old. We intended to get a wide variety of breeds but when we got to Tractor Supply they had Bantam chickens which are supposedly only 3/4 the size of other breeds. We purchased eight babies, they're really small.
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| Food and water bowls on left, Mama Hen brooder adjustable legs on right |
We avoided handling them much on this first day, we just wanted them to adjust to their new home in a Walmart box.
We have an infrared brooder heat lamp bulb connected to a BAV (large variac, 2000 watt capacity) to control the bulb temperature output. We also have a "Mama Hen" brooder heater, the chickens go under this to warm up, it is an inverted thermostatically controlled hot plate with adjustable-height legs, this keeps the babies at 95 degrees F which is what they want. They'll be sleeping under Mama Hen tonight when the ambient outdoor air drops to 60-degrees.
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| Sleepy heads peeking out from under brooder for the first time |
Baby chicks have the softest feathers on Earth, just brushing your finger on them is an amazing treat, an incredible bit of soft fluff.
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| We chased them out from under Mama Hen after letting them sleep for two hours |
In the 7+ hours since the babies arrived they've adjusted to their surroundings. They venture out from under Mama Hen, eat food and drink water. They run around a bit and then, as if hit by an invisible force, they drop flat on their face in their bed of pine chips and completely black out. When napping they look dead but they're just resting after their horrible and exhausting journey from Texas via USPS, to Tractor Supply and into the display case for a couple of days before we ripped them out of the homeless shelter and brought them to our home. They seem to like being here, not a lot of peeping or complaining.
We wanted to pick out the ones we got but with the new system at TSC it is just a matter of what the sales girl could grab, the chicks were pretty fast trying to escape the selection arm. The young TSC lady picked out (aka grabbed) eight beautiful little chicks for us.
The baby chicks were very lethargic when they first arrived, it concerned us and we wondered if they were sickly or ill. Nope, just tired. After some well deserved nap time all the chicks came out to explore the box.
NAMES - Of course we had to name them:
Oddball - Grayish-Blue mottled feathers, black beak with dot on tip, feathered legs/feet
Nugget - black mottled feathers, orange beak, feathered legs/feet
Skunk - striped back, no feathers on his legs
Lemmon - all yellow, feathered legs/feet
Blackie - black feathers with white patch on chest, feathered legs/feet
Rake'n - lots of black, unique bright tip on beak, feathered legs/feet
Trouble - Orange all over, feathered legs/feet, first to come out and run around
Double - Orange (like Trouble), white on head, white angel wings, feathered legs/feet,
All of the babies except for Skunk appear to have "feathered legs", these can be quite fancy in appearance when they get older.
It was fun to hear the employees at Tractor Supply Co. speak about the birds as cute. When we checked out the lady said as she handed me the carrier-box of baby birds, "Here's your box of cuties".
How do you tell if a baby chicken is unhappy? They PEEP a lot and quite loudly.
How do you tell when a chicken is happy? They're very nappy :-)
When baby chickens are happy and running around in their world they have an almost continuous low level of peep-like sounds burbling out of them. In listening to our neighbors mature chickens communicate I've come to think their language is much more evolved than just a bunch of random expletives in chicken-speak.
Their first video and all eight chicks cooperated by staying together. It took an hour or two in order for them to discover their food dish and water fountain but after we pushed the dishes over next to them the babies quickly adapted.
