The chicks have arrived!!

There's two ways to try something new.  You can have a plan and have every detail worked out.  With chicks, that means having the brooder ready well in advance, have the next home already in the works, and knowing exactly when the chicks should have their next experience.  There are no doubts in your mind about how this could go because you've thought of everything!  Then there's the way where you just decide to do, and work out the plan as you go.  That's us!  If we had waited until we had a procedure on how to do this, it would probably be 2 years before we felt like we would be ready for the chick commitment.  So we decided to make a brooder (I think that is what it's called, lol) and learn the rest as we go.

We ordered 5 Dominique chicks to go with our existing adult Dominique flock and 15 Salmon Faverolles.  We bought them from MyPetChicken.com

Here is a stock photo of what our Faverolles will look like when they are adults.

For our brooder, we took a large wire cage that found in the barn.  It is a cage that has a middle piece that separates it into 2 sides.  We have 3 heat lamps on it.  We are keeping them in the basement, so 3 heat lamps should be enough to offset the cool temp down there.  We cut some cardboard and taped it to 3 sides.  The cardboard is to help hold the shavings and heat in. 

The very nice mailman from the Adell Post Office dropped off our peeping package while we were at work.  Here they are in their box!

I didn't realize how red the pictures would turn out...  We're using 2 red heating lamps and 1 white heat lamp.  Red is better so they can sleep.

The dark ones are the Dominiques.  Out of the 5, 3 arrived in poor condition.  One of them already died, one seems to have bounced back and the last... not sure yet.  We are not out of the woods with her.  We bought some save-a-chick electrolyte mix to add to their water.  It seems to have helped.

The yellow ones are the  Faverolles.  They arrived in great condition.  They are full of energy and very curious.  They don't really enjoy being held... apparently they have things to do... :)     Its especially cute when the run really fast and then fall over because they've lost control!

So sleepy....

We will keep you posted on their growth!!