Chicks

Our chicks came today ( march 19th 2009) and no I don't mean dudes' girlfriends, I mean little baby "girl" chickens.

We were only supposed to get 25 layers and 25 meat birds, (yum!!) but we were lucky enough to get a few extra "to experiment with," as my dad said.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm writing for me, my brother and sister, I'm Katie, 10 years old, my brother Stephen is 9 years old and my sister Helen just turned 8.

My mom thought it would be a good idea if we wrote about our new chicks and how we're keeping them alive.

Helen says: I think the chicks are really cute. I named two of them #1: fluffy (she is a layer.) and # 2 is fluffier it is hard to take care of a chick.

Stephen says: yummy meat birds yes indeed yummy yummy here birdy .Ok down to business. I named 2 babies and yeah that's my share. Here birdy.

I say: Oh ha ha Stephen reeeaaal mature. Anyway the chicks are really cute and I named 4! Fast, Furious, Funny and Noisy. (Stephen helped with Noisy.)

So more about the chicks:

1) The meat birds are Cornish Giants and they are yellow fluffs right now but will turn white.
2) The layers are Red Rock crosses and are black and fluffy.

Mr. Peterson from Country Feeds says we can literally watch the meat birds grow. They will be ready to eat in 10 weeks. Our layers might start laying this fall.

Here are some ways we take care of the chicks:

1) It is really important to make sure that the middle of the pen is around 90F if it is not they will be too cold and they will pile on top of each other and suffocate. If they are too hot they will go on the outside of the pen and pile on top of each other and suffocate (kind of dumb, isn't it?)

2) It is also important to make sure their water is clean.

3) You should probably start them on starter feed. After 3 weeks the meat birds can start on normal grain. After 6 weeks the layers may start on some special grain!!!

4) After they're big enough we will move them into our chicken coop.

5) Mr. Peterson said to dip the beaks into water so they would learn to drink.

6) You should probably get your chicks vaccinated so that they do not get diseases.

7) Soon we will have to separate them because they will be eating two different types of feed and the meat birds will be so big they might kill the layers.

8) Our layers will only lay brown eggs. You can get layers that produce white eggs. The way you can tell is that if your chickens lay white or brown is if their ear lobes are red that means they will lay brown eggs! But if they have white ear lobes they will only will lay white eggs (my mom did not now this interesting fact!)

9) Supplies we needed: heat lamp, cardboard enclosure, shavings (we had lots of those!), chick feeder and waterers, vitamins for the water, and starter grain.

10) Don't get too attached to the meat birds. They won't be around long!

by Katie, Stephen and Helen