Backyard Chickens: A Twitter Feed

17 Airmailed overnight.  Chicks are 13 hours old.

Getting their first drink.  This waterer will be suspended from floor of 8'X4' coop,
with chicken run beneath it.  We are keeping five, six, no, seven.

Pigpile!!!!!

Awake!!!

Slumber party in the corner!

Temporary home with heat lamp.  3 weeks until coop time.  We may need to expand...

Begin your "awwws" now.  We are finally getting our backyard chickens.  Here is a brief summary:

Twitter Feed: Here are the Tweets

Two days 'til chickens!  Araucana, Buff Orpington, Barred Plymouth Rock

Going postal: Chicks arrive!  SO CUTE!!!!  Born 7 a.m. yesterday morning.  17 Airmailed.


Give first water.  They need no training.  Green poop.

Start of naming process: Buffy, Puffy, T-Bird, Wingtip, Ping, Piccata, Runty...

Runty is so tiny and whiter than the other Aracunas.  She keeps peeping loudly and pecking her sisters.  

Day 2: Birds are already bigger, except Runty.  Cleaned her butt for "pasting up".  Dried umbilical cord.  Stressed.

Chicks are in "pig pile", sleeping.

Chicks are awake!


Poop looks like oatmeal.

Dusk: Chicks having a slumber party.  All asleep except two that keep running around.  Oops!  Chicks all awake again! 

Day 3: Birds developing actual feathers at wing tips.  Eating more.  Possible 50% bigger.  Cleaned Runty again and separated her to 90ºF room.

Friend John comes by with extra cage and light.  He is camping and I will care for his 5 along with the other dozen.  4 going to another friend.

Runty returned to cage under 95º heat lamp.  Not eating or drinking.  Tried hand-feeding.

Runty is dead. Buried under shrub.

Midnight: Talking with friend in Albuqueque.  Power goes out, which includes heat lamps!  Outside, utility pole on fire!  Firemen watch.

Chicks are pig-piled and sleeping.  Don't know what to do.

Day 4: Flashing lights and idling fire truck outside our house.  Four hours sleep.  Chicks survive night.

Chicks are jumping their full height now, trying to perch.  Chicks eat all feed and get more.  Poop gets odor, is thicker.

Work on coop with Dad.  4 hours screwing in 3 supports, finding frame lost its square, then doing several crazy things to make it square to get the flooring in.  Lunch.

Day 5: Chicks love to jump and attempt to fly.  They are evolving!

Day 6: Chicks begin scratching surface of cage floor.  A lot.

Day 7: Cage litter seems less random.  Is that circle within a circle a match for the CERN Hadron Collider meant to find the God particle?

Day 8: Chicks are huddled again, plotting.

Day 9: Men in suits are at my door–