Bock and Roll

The chicks arrived by mail today, we picked them up at 8 am at the post office. Poor babies! They were hatched Tuesday, and have been in transport for probably over 48 hours. When we opened the box one was dead already. Now we have lost two more, all golden sebright bantams, a breed whose chicks usually have high mortality rates. They were very chilled. It was kind of sad. But the ones who made it (the other 23) have grown already I think and are running around, scratching and eating, acting like big chickens. I really don't know what kinds we have. Definetely had 6 golden sebrights, 5 white silkies, I think 4 Black Cochin (bantam), and a few ameracaunas (Easter egg chickens, lay coloured eggs like blue). The others I'm still trying to figure out. Danish Brown Leghorn, Buff Orpingtons or Buff Brahmas. I ordered the best deal package heritage and bantam mix. All surprises here. We ordered from Rochester Hatcheries in Alberta, Canada's largest hatchery with a good rep.

The pictures I took were pretty poor quality with the red light... These are Golden Sebright chicks...They turn into these... flighty sketchy true bantams, not good for eggs, but good looking.

Sweet little silkies, I really wanted some of these and we have 5! For real!!

Well we'll get some good shots of the chickies in the coming weeks. I feel relived to have had the experience and see it is quite simple after all. I hear they grow pretty fast. We can let them out (and also intergrate with the old hens, not so fun) in a month. They won't start laying for 6 months or so, around the time we'll need to stewpot the roosters, all but maybe one, the most gorgeous. So we'll see!