This all began for us after a trip to our favorite orchard, http://www.oldstoneorchard.com/, when we brought Adam to see the blossoms in the spring 2 years ago. They had baby chicks there, and yes they were very cute as all babies are. Adam said we should get chickens- yea right! The next spring the conversation came up again, yea right was still my idea about the whole thing. We do have 2 cats, but my only pet/animal experience growing up was my pet goldfish- so this was totally out of my realm of thought. Don't you know, the kids came down from the computer one day yelling that daddy had just ordered 25 chickens!!!
We got our first shipment of the "ornamental layer collection" from McMurray hatchery, http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/, on Easter Sunday (we were shocked the post office was open) of 2008. We had set up a coop in the basement the day before thankfully. It went very well, we did lose one after a week or 2- a runt, but other wise they were all very healthy and grew fast. The kids loved it, and were in the coop from the very beginning.
Since it was a mix- we didn't know what were getting for breeds. So we were on the internet looking at pictures of chickens and guessing what we thought we had. We ended up with 12 polish silkies, 4 buff laced polish, 3 egyptian fayoumis, one leghorn rooster, 3 golden campines, 1 barred rock, 1 crevecoeur and 2 old English game hens.
since their coop was to be built on the back of the garage, and the garage was not built, they were in the basement for quite a while. looking back on the pictures now, its hard to believe that they were okay like that, but they nor us knew any better at that time. 
I think the pictures were dated June 2 when we moved them down the coop.
No comments:
Post a Comment