Baby Chicks Arrive

Bought 5 Barred Rock Pullets from Cackle Hatchery. (Pullets: A female chicken between the ages of 1 day and 12 months). Most places will have a 25 chick minimum order, and for the backyard chicken farmer who is only allowed 6 hens, it really didn't work out. Cackle Hatchery will send as little as 5 chicks, which is the main reason I went with this hatchery. I would have loved to buy from an Alaska Hatchery to keep things local, but they didn't have any available until spring, and I wanted fall chicks.

The Barred Rock Hens or AKA Plymouth Rocks, are bantam dual purpose birds. (Bantam Chicken: basically a smaller sized chicken). They are fantastic birds for our climate as they are good egg layers in the cold weather, and are also good for roasting. All chicks are healthy and eating and drinking. Two days in and no visible problems with the chicks. We have them in our chick box, with a 120 watt flood light about 20 inches off the bedding...and its hot, like 100 °F hot. And we put cardboard around it to keep out the drafts.

We didn't want to wait until Spring to get these chicks. As it would be a year before we would see our first egg. So we opted to buy these later in the summer, August. We hope the chicks will have full plumage before the weather gets too cold. We hope to have our first eggs by New Years Day.