Three weeks old and doing fine. Everyone is starting to get feathers, and they look terribly ratty while the feathers are coming in. Once they are feathered they’ll be ready to start venturing outdoors.

If it’s gold and doesn’t have feathers on it’s feet, it’s a buff orpington. Everything else is ‘assorted cochins’.

I spent a bit of time with the chicks this morning, just sitting and talking to them, looking them over to make sure no one needed any special attention. They are a week old now. So far, so good. Even the little one-eye’d one is still getting along fine.

This annoyed girl had a bit of a poopy stuck to her bottom, so I caught her and cleaned her bottom. Turned out it was no big deal, but I figured better safe than sorry – sometimes they can get stopped up. Don’t want that!

I have set up a brooder box in the house (much to the cat’s delight) and moved one chick into it. I have had my eye on this one since I brought them home. She’s a little small, not as active, and only has one eye open. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her, might not be sick, might just be some internal abnormality. I thought she might be better off with a little personalized attention. Mostly I want to see if she’s eating and drinking, and I can’t tell when she’s with the rest of the mob.

Update: in the evening after confirming she was eating, drinking and pooping, we put her back out with the other chicks – she was so happy to see them! There’s so many, I don’t think they even noticed she was gone and accepted her right back into the group.

The rest of the chicks are doing fine, active and happy. When I went to check on them this morning I found them all arranged in a perfect half circle around the hot spot from the lamp. They are picking the temperature that is the most comfortable. The sickly one is in the lower right, the little black and white one who is sitting a little closer to the light.

Today I brought home 20 chicks – 10 Buff Orpingtons, and 10 feather-footed cochins. I can’t wait to see what the cochins grow into, they are partridge colored, red, white and buff, and maybe a black or blue in there too. They were still unloading chicks from the packing crates when I got to the feed store this morning, so they packed mine right up in a little box and I brought them straight home to their brooder box which was all warmed up and outfitted with food and water.

I started out using my waterer I used for the chicks last year, but they ended up hopping right into it, so I switched to this chicken-waterer that has just a shallow trough so no one will get their butt wet standing in it.

There are two little guys like this, I think they are the partridge colored cochins. I know they’re cochins, look at all the feathers on her legs.

Wednesday I will be picking up 20 chicks from the feed store – 10 buff o’s and 10 assorted color cochins – red, black and buff. Hopefully someone will go broody and I’ll get some chicks from my own hens as well this year, but because the feed store chicks are sexed, I thought this would be a nice way to go. Not so many roosters to deal with. Also I want to handle them more and make them friendly, not stand-offish like my mama-raised birds. I plan to keep the ones I like and sell the other one’s to be urban egg layers, since city-folk love having tame chickens, but not everyone has the facilities to raise their own chicks.

I set up a 4 x 4ft brooder box in the chicken shed, with a heat lamp hanging from the ceiling on a chain, and food and water inside. The floor is covered in vinyl to protect it, and that is covered in wood chips. This same system worked great for the turkey chicks last year. Now I just need a cover to keep the cat out.