And So It Begins....New Chicks!

It's getting to be that time of year again...a very busy time of year, before long.  But the weather will be nice (not so today, celebrating the first day of spring with 3 inches of snow as we are :)....but it's New England, and that's the life!). 

So what time of year is it?

Chick Time!

I have a pretty good-sized laying flock of chickens out back as it is, but they are starting to show their age.  Some of them I'm pretty much just feeding because they're there, and I know there have to be several who were not laying (I know this because I have some breeds like Ameraucanas that lay colored eggs, and I have none :(  ...too bad, they make great Easter eggs!).  Of course, some of them have just not started back up yet - it's been a long, cold, winter here.  But still, I know that a number of them are in decline so I had planned to start a fresh batch of laying hens this year to come up as replacements come next Fall.

I pretty much order chicks, online or off, every year.  It used to be that I always ordered my chicks from the local Farm store.  Last year was my first year to order chicks online.  That worked out pretty good for me because we raised about 40 meat chicks last year for the freezer, and it was somewhat simpler as far as handling goes, and by ordering chicks online I was able to save money. Ordering chicks online has its own pros and cons, but that's a discussion for another day.

Yesterday we found ourselves at Tractor Supply Company, which is in full-swing with new chick orders every week, and so we came home with 16 new chicks.  More than I had planned, but that's always the way of it, isn't it?  We came back with 3 black sex-links, 3 Brahmas, 6 red sex-link pullets, and 4 little Bantam chicks, my daughter's investment.

And so, it begins.  This was my first experience buying chicks from Tractor Supply Company.  Actually, it's only about my third trip to that store, as they've just recently reached this area (but seem to be taking off like wildfire!).  It was nice being able to choose from among the chicks that they had there, because we were able to pick the strongest looking birds (and so far, so good - haven't lost any, but always keep the fingers crossed!).  On the other hand we were limited yesterday to what was available in-store, but they do also accept custom orders on over 40 breeds.  That might be something to look into for the next step, but for now, we'll get this set up and running before we start it all over again with our meat bird runs!

And now, off to the next step...more research on chicken housing and plans to build a small chicken coop....all these different birds mean good housing setups for each one!

Happy chicking!

Great Sites for Plans for Chicken Coop & More!

Chickens actually are a big part of what we do around here. We keep hens for eggs and we also raise a big number of meat birds, which we'll probably be increasing and expanding this year. But our set-up isn't quite right just yet, so I'm still looking into some different options as far as plans for chicken coop goes.


Looking around for plans and ideas to build a small chicken coop, I've come up so far with a couple of good sources you might want to check out! Yeah the pages are a little sales-y but I can say that the products behind them are really quite good, and there is excellent additional information on some of these pages to boot. Bonus! Check out these two leading resources for

Small Chicken Coop Plans:

• Build Small Chicken Coop....some great plans and designs
• Build a Simple Chicken Coop .....great plan and design ideas, but also some extra goodies of information worth checking out!