Henrik Watches Chicken TV!

The chicks are 3 weeks old now and we have been having unseasonably warm, and gorgeous, weather for the past week with temps in the mid 70's to upper 80's!  For mid-March in the Buffalo area this is unheard of.  I actually cut the grass today because it has already grown so much!!!
I thought it might be nice to get the chicks out of the garage and out from under their red heat lamp to actually see the real sun.  I moved them out on the grass in their temporary housing and they loved it.  You know who loved it more?  Our 5 1/2 month old son, Henrik.  I put him in his Boppy pillow to prop him up and he watched chicken TV for quite a while.  They watched each other very intently not quite sure what to make out of the other.  So cute!

And here is what the chicks looked like the day they arrived.  We split an order of 27 birds with my friend Megan of which we ordered 9, all from McMurray Hatchery (click here to watch a video of their amazing operation that hatches millions of chicks each month).  A week later we picked up 2 more birds from a local feed store for a total of 11 new birds to add to the flock.  We got the following breeds: Araucana (aka Americana) which lay blue, green or pink eggs, Barred Rock, Partridge Rock, New Hampshire Red, Cuckoo Maran which lay chocolate colored eggs, Black Australorps, a Red Frizzle Cochin Bantam (gotta see it so click the link here for a photo of what it will look like), a white mystery chicken that I didn't order and possible one more, can't remember.  They grow so fast and go from cute to awkward teenagers in no time as they are in the photos above.  All the chicks that we got aside from the Red Frizzle are heavy layers in that they lay large brown or colored eggs and lay them often.  Gotta earn their keep!

The chicks are born at McMurray Hatchery in Ames, Iowa (Gangloff if you are reading this, yep these chickens were once your neighbors) and are shipped at one day old arriving by 3 days old in this specially designed box.  

Here they are all huddled together to keep each other warm which is why they ship a minimum of 25 chicks.

This is one of Megan's chick, what she believes to be a Dorking Bantam.  I could not believe how small this bird was in my hand!

Here the chicks begin to eat and learn how to be chickens.  Immediately after arrival you have to dunk each one's beak in water to teach it to drink.  The seem to have eating down without any tutorial.