New home, New state, New chickens!

Since we last talked, my family packed up everything we owned including 3 horses, 2 chickens, 2 cats and a dog and headed for Missouri to start a new adventure on a 40 acre lake-side ranch. The weather here is incredibly different then Wyoming...no wind! Our planting season is 3 months longer, trees are plentiful, and the wildlife is amazing. Except the ticks. I hate the ticks! Which brings me to our topic...chickens! All of the locals claim that chickens (and guineas and turkeys) are natures best tick hunters.  So we have expanded our chicken numbers from 11 to 33, and are planning on purchasing some guineas, too.  The two chickens that we hauled all the way from Wyoming acclimated very quickly to their new home but unfortunately one was killed by either a raccoon or a fox late one night last summer. So our one original girl is still with us and is still laying beautiful brown eggs right on schedule. We now have 2 roosters with our flock so with luck maybe some of the hens will sit on their eggs and nature can take its course!
I will post pics of our newest babies soon. Stay tuned!

A new spring with new babies!

     I have been trying for the past 3 months to try to order chickens online, but a most of you know many of the hatcheries require something like a 25 chick minimum! I can not have 25 chicks running around my little back yard, so I had to find a hatchery without any minimums. The only 2 or 3 hatcheries that I found either did not have the breed I wanted or they would nit arrive soon enough! I was getting extremely frustrated. So finally I gave up. Luckily... our local feed and tack store to my convenience had another order of chicks come in on Monday, March 12th. We went and picked out three birds. 2 auricanas (same as Psyche) and 1 light brahma. The first auricana is named Delilah. (My mom named it!) The second auricana is named Aphrodite because in the Greek myth of Aphrodite and Psyche, Psyche thought she was more beautiful than Aphrodite (the Goddess of beauty) haha. So in memory of my first auricana Psyche, I hope that Aphrodite will be just as beautiful if not prettier. The final chick, the light brahma, is named Pippie. I thought this would be a perfect name for her because she is so lively and happy. Considering the babies are only a few days old, I will nit take pictures of them until next Friday. 
     On the other hand, Pelo and Houdini are doing well, but Pelo was a little but blodied up when our new puppy decided to chew on him a little bit. He is fine now though and you can not even tell that he was even hurt. They are most certainly boys though.
     Finally, the filler roosters that we had bought with our first batch of chicks were just butchered yesterday and today. We only got about 3 or 4 pounds off of each one, but that is because they are not supposed to be meat birds. 
     Hopefully, the new chicks will get along fine with the dog and the two ducks once they are older. As of now the dog is perfectly fine with the chicks and we have taught him not to bite or hurt the babies. This way when we get more babies he will refrain from hurting or eating them. 
    One last thing... As of Monday, we will be putting an offer on a house in Missouri because we are a little bit tired of Casper, Wyoming. The house we are looking at has 40 acres on a lake, so our chickens, horses, dog, and whatever other animals we want will have plenty of room to roam. I will still continue to post on here about the newest happenings with our chickens though so that all of my viewers can continue to keep up with everyone.
     Thank you for reading and have a happy St. Patrick's day!

Tears

I am so very depressed, but I must share all of my news.    
     Unfortunately, due to food poisoning Psyche, my favorite chicken and best friend, past away. I  will be burning her and keeping her ashes. All of the new chicks, not including the duck, also died. A raccoon climbed into their house and killed every last one of them. We were all devastated, but new chicks will be coming soon. The ducks, Pelo and Houdini, are still doing wonderful. Although, recently Houdini's tail has began to curl, meaning Houdini is probably a boy. Bummer........ I will post when the new chicks arrive, or if some excited event happens.
Thank-you to all of my faithful viewers

Sad Story

     I am sure you all saw the new pictures of the chicks that I posted two weeks ago. Everyone was doing alright until last week. From the start we had to keep the babies and the two ducks separate from one another. So we had all of the chicks in the cages in the garage. This worked perfectly until they started to outgrow the small cage. Well, that was not too terrible because it was still relatively warm outside, and the chicks were big enough to stand the cold as long as they had Psyche and a heat light near them. All of the male chicks stayed in their large cage to await the time when they would grow mature enough to be able to be placed out at my grandpa's 9 acres. This is because we are not aloud to house roosters within the city limits. But they are amlost big enough!

New picks, and sad news.

     Well, I have good news, and not so good news. As I had told you, we were expecting our chickens to arrive soon. They arrived! On Thursday of last week, we received 14 brand new healthy baby chicks. We bought 2 Silver Laced Cochin Bantams, 2 Golden Laced Polishes, 2 Quail Belgian D'anver Bantams, and 2 Mille Fleur D'uccle Bantams. Considering there were only eight one-day old baby chicks being shipped to us, there would not have been enough heat for them to survive. In order to keep these babies warm enough, they placed six little males in the box with them.
     Alright, unfortunately… I have to tell you the bad news. Out of the 2 Quail Belgians we were given, there was one male and one female. The female seemed to be very disoriented from the start, but she was still my favorite. I named her Cricket. Cricket was out in the yard in the cage with the rest of her friends, but when we got home, we found that she was missing.  We try to keep on the bright side of things, but deep down we know that she is no longer here. :(     
      Anyway, (back to a happy note) I was able to take my weekly Friday pictures of all of these babies now that they are a week old, and they are now able to be handled. These pictures are posted below along with captions, and the name of the chicken. (except for the males) I will not be taking pictures of each and every one. I will choose my favorite chicks or the best ones to take pictures of, and I will continue to take their pictures every Friday. Keep a watch out for more pictures! Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you continue to follow my blog posts!

New chickens, and chicken check-up

     Hello fellow chicken lovers. I have not been posting lately, because there has not been very much to post about. But, now I have some very exciting news. Pelo, our crested duck has grown to his full size, and is officially a boy. (His tail curled up.) We also acquired two new mallard ducklings for free from a friend of ours. We have a hunch that one is a boy, and one is a girl. Oh no! We really are not in the mood for more male ducks. Anyway, the duck that we think is a boy is named Perry. (After "Perry the Platypus") The one that we think is a girl, is named Houdini, the escape artist.
     Okay, so leaving the duck subject... we have also ordered a few more chicks (like six or seven) and they should be arriving sometime really late tonight. I am so excited! Most of the ones that I ordered are bantams, meaning we are going to be eating some tiny eggs! But we also got a few standard breeds. (Including 2 polishes... YAY!) I will select two or three of my favorite chickens, and I will continue to take weekly pictures of them so that you can keep up with their growth. Oh ya... I almost forgot! The site I ordered these chickens from was called http://www.ideal-poultry.com/. This is an AMAZING site to order your chickens from, if you are only trying to buy a few chickens. The only draw-back is, that if you buy less than 25 chicks, they will place male chicks in the box with your order (free of charge) so the chicks will stay warm. With our male chicks, we are just going to put them out where we keep our horses, because of course you are not aloud to have roosters within the city limit. So to close up this post I will ask all  of my readers to tell your friends, family, neighbors, and in-laws about this amazing blog, because I would love for people to know all about my chickens! Thank you everyone, I will have pictures of the new babies, and new posts coming soon!

unfortunate chickens

   Well fellow chicken lovers... I am extremely upset to share my bad news with those of you who are reading this. My two new babies, and the big duck died. Heeby and Jeeby both died by drowning in our new stock tank. Heeby died the day I left for Texas, which was the 17th of June, and Jeeby died on June 25th. I'm sorry I have not been posting, but this is the reason for my falling behind. Puddle died on June 24th, because he was attacked by some kind of animal. This devastaded my sister, because he was her special show duck. On top of all this stress, I found out that Psyche has mites, because Wyoming has had so much moisture this year. This year holds the record for most birds having mites... or so I am told. She also has some kind of infected, broken feather on her back that my mother and I had to lance and try to get rid of as soon as we could. We were told that if we did not do this, she might receive blood poisoning and could possibly die from it. We could not stand for anymore dead birds, so we canceled our trip to Minnesota, and instead we took the chicken out to the lake with us so that we could keep an eye on her for a few days. This way we still bring our boat out to the lake, and have some fun out on the water. Psyche seemed to be doing much better, so we dropped her off at our home, and my grandfather is now taking care of her while we left to go to Illinois and visit some family friends of ours. Hopefully she will feel better, and we can order some new chicks.
   Happy 4th of July everyone! Be sure to thank our troops this year. Hug your friends, say hello to your neighbors, love your family, and be thankful for everything you are given and able to do.