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| March 2010 |
It was the 18th of March when we went to our local farm supply store and picked out Martha and her sisters. They were so incredibly small and soft. The children and I would sit and watch them under the heat lamp as they ran around peeping. There is something soothing and therapeutic about watching chickens.
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| Chocolate |
Raising chicks is pretty easy to do but there are things that can go wrong and we experienced that first hand with our littlest chick, Chocolate. She had a "pasting" issue. Basically, fecal matter gets stuck in their feathers (or fluff) and if this is not removed, the chick can die. It is fairly easy to remove with a warm moistened paper towel but there are times when it has to be pulled off, and unfortunately the fluff gets ripped out as you do.
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| Martha |
Chickens are adorable but not super bright. They would poop in their water and food constantly, so I ended up cleaning their water container twice daily. Given the amount they poop each day, it really helped using a "deep litter" for their habitat. I used a 3 inch layer of pine pellets in their box and sprinkled a think layer of pine pellets over their refuse each day. The chicks stayed clean and there was no odor in the garage, which was there home for the first two months. The pine pellets look a lot like the adult feed, so we opted to continue feeding them "crumble" when they became adults.
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| The girls visit the great outdoors |
We started taking the chicks outside for daytime visits when they were about a month and a half old. They would huddle together and explore the yard together. When one was separated from the other, they would all panic. Their sisterhood was firmly established.
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| The new home |
When warm nights were a guarantee, we had their new home built. I went to such great lengths to ensure that it would be just the right size and that each hen would have their own nesting box. It was quite a surprise to find that all three would sleep in the same nesting box together. They use the other nesting boxes to lay eggs. When one hen is laying an egg, another sits sentinel beside her. Their relationship is a beautiful thing to behold.
