Ira Bea, the Beauty Queen

Ira Bea, the Beauty Queen
Ira Bea, 2 days old

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Days 10-16: May 24-31

Sorry for all of the delays in posting everyone! We have a very good reason, I promise! Brandon and I got married on Monday the 28th and we have been doing last minute wedding preparations and were not able to post as much as either of us would have liked. This post will be *super* photo heavy to try and get all the changes in. 

May 23:
The beginnings of their tails!


Look at the patterns on their feathers. Ira hadn't really gotten any tail feathers at this point.


Coq au Vanessa and Lucy spreading their wings.
There have been SO many new changes with our little chickens. Their temperature was raised to 85 degrees, feathers have appeared down their backs, they have started to fly around the brooder box, perching on our fingers is starting to be fun, their wings have elongated so we are starting to see the patterns emerge and they have started dusting! 

May 24:
Coq au Vanessa shows off her tail


Scallop perched on Brandon's finger


Sweet Pea spreading her wings


Lucy, with new and improved darker beak


Coq au Vanessa displaying her wings


Coq au Vanessa with back feathers


Irene close up


Sweet Pea wing
Ira Bea came and sat with us on the bed and fell asleep as I stroked her head. Apparently another chicken startled her and she hopped over into the neckline of Brandon's robe. It was quite the picture, but she moved before he camera would focus. 

May 25:
Ira Bea and Papa Bran


Scallop and Bran


Lucy perched on Brandon's hand
I picked up a new bunch of chicks for our friend yesterday and he traded us one of his chicks for one of our older girls, so we have a new addition to our flock! One of our older girls went home with a friend of ours and now we have a one day old strawberry blonde chick named Eula Mae. She is so gentle and loving. All of our other chicks had to warm up to us, but little Eula Mae has loved to be held by us from the very start. She stands away from the others a bit, but otherwise she holds her own. Lucy and Sweet Pea are guarding her and keeping her safe. 

May 31: Eula Mae!
Eula Mae saying hello!


Sitting on Papa Bran's hand


She still has her egg beak on!


Such a cute chick, look at her stripes!


She had feathers on her wing at 1 day old!
More photos of our other chickens will be added later this evening, as well as a video of them dusting. Hooray! In other news, we have purchased a number of things to make the outdoor coop and are going to begin construction this weekend! Our birds are so hearty that we are almost positive they will be able to go outside for the first time since coming to live with us very soon!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Days 7-9: May 21-23

The past couple of days have been very slow going in Chickenland. We haven't seen a ton of progress, but they now have even more feathers on their wings and their tails are getting longer and filling in a bit more. The chickens are starting to look more like adolescents. Their necks have elongated and they are a little more sure in their movements. We will be posting new photos tomorrow.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Day 6- May 20th


Today the peepers got an infrared light! We had a 125 watt white brooder light previously and we felt like it stressed the chicks out a bit. Once or twice I would see the chicks peck each other. Since the chicks are needing less heat, we purchased a 100 watt infrared heat bulb. The chicks are so much calmer! 

The little chicks also got a great new treat this morning, fresh meal worms! It was one of the funniest things we have seen them do so far. One chick would run up to the dish of meal worms, pick one up and run all over the brooder box while trying to avoid the beaks of the other chicks, or in some cases, their own shadows. We took a video (sorry for all of the commentary!) and it's looking a little grainy on our end, so hopefully it plays alright on your end!

As promised, here are the photos of the new tail feathers!
Look at those little feathers!


Lucy refuses to go with the crowd


Coq au Vanessa is getting her blue feet in!


Lucy practicing her yoga pose!



Day 5: May 19th

Tail feathers are starting to appear! There are approximately 8 feathers on their little tails, but it's still progress!
More feathers have appeared on their wings, and Irene is bringing up the rear in terms of progress. Her feathers are a bit slower coming in, but she is going to be a beautiful bird nonetheless. I took some photos of the tiny tail feathers and will post them in a few hours. They are a little hard to see, but since we are updating frequently, there will be better, more visible photos soon!

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Day 4: May 18th



Lucy 4 days old
The chicks have grown up almost overnight and are now starting to develop longer necks and their wings are almost entirely feathered. They are starting to enjoy us petting them and Scallop even fell asleep in my hand while Brandon stroked her head gently from side to side. I am still a little bit nervous holding them since they are so fragile, but Brandon is wonderful at helping make sure they are secure and that I am doing a good job not freaking out. 
Scallop with her almost fully feathered wing!


The chicks' appetites have increased pretty steadily and I obtained a cut on my finger while attempting to clean their galvanized food dish. Ouch! I didn't realize the edges were so sharp, but nothing to fear, it's healing just fine. Brandon says that there may be plastic feeders in their near future. 




 The chicks also got their first handful of greens to start pecking at and apparently they liked it a lot. They wouldn't eat if from my hand, but I placed the greens in the brooder box and left the room and the greens are almost completely gone. We will be feeding them fresh greens and meal worms occasionally as treats.





Friday, May 18, 2012

Day 3: May 17th


The chicks are starting to lose some of the fluffiness and are developing small feathers at the ends of their wings. They are starting to be a little bit calmer and appear to be getting used to us being around. The chicks are starting to perch and they are starting to show so much personality! Scallop is already scratching at the ground and kicking up a mess! Here are some photos from this evening. Sorry about some of the fuzzy photos. 


Coq au Vanessa Day 3


Coq au Vanessa Feathers Day 3


Ira Bea Day 3


Irene Day 3


Irene Day 3


Scallop Feathers Day 3


Close up of Scallop's scalloped head markings Day 3


More of Scallop's feathers Day 3




Jillian and Scallop Day 3


Lucy Sleeping on the Perch Day 3


Alert! Day 3


All tuckered out!



Because the chicks are progressive wayyyyy more rapidly than we thought, we may be doing updates daily!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Preparing for the chicks; Days 1 & 2

The Brooder Box
When we first decided to get the chicks, we went out and bought supplies for a brooder box at our local feed store and at Lowe's.  The brooder box is important because this is where the chicks will live for the first two months of their lives. To have 5-8 chicks, we needed to have a space no smaller than a 2ft wide by 4ft long by 2ft high. We used an insulated carboard box. You also need a layer of substrate over the bottom of the box. We purchased pine shavings and made a layer approximately 1-2 inches thick. Next, we clamped the portable heat lamp to the side of the box. For our brooder box, we have a reflector rated to 150w and a brooder light at 125w. There is a small thermometer about 2.5 inches from the bottom of the box. We added a waterer and for one quart of water, added 2 tablespoons of sugar as per the directions from Legacy Farms.  We put medicated chick starter in a feeder and placed that in the box next to some chick grit. Chicks also like being able to sleep above the ground, so we flipped over a cardboard drink holder and slipped 2 dowels through the centers and created a makeshift perch. 


Day 1: May 15th
After we picked the chicks up from the post office, Brandon couldn't wait to open the box and make sure all of the chicklets were doing fine. He picked up the little chick with the yellow face and gray fluff that he named Ira Bea and said "Hi little chick, I'm your Papa Bran!" with an enormous grin on his face. It was wonderful! Here is a picture of the first time he held Ira.
Ira Bea, 1 day old with Brandon.
I picked the little brown and gray chick and named her Irene. My grandfather had a chicken when he was young that looked like all of other chicken on a farm they were overseeing. He took his sister's lipstick and drew a ring around her neck to ensure that he knew which chicken she was. When he put her in the roost, she showed off and paraded around and became "the queen of the chickens" . So the most unique chick in the box is Irene, so that I will never have to cover her in lipstick :) Here is the picture of me holding Irene for the first time.
Irene, 2 days old
We put all the chicks in the brooder box ever so gently. The chicks were so cute! They had cute puffy cheeks and tiny, fluffy wings. They found the food and water pretty much on their own ,but we tipped their beaks into the food and water so they knew where to find them. Here is a picture of them in the brooder box. 




Day 2: May 16th
The chicks are all settled in. I think they like a bit of a cooler temperature instead of the recommended 95 degrees. We really love the sudden bouts of narcolepsy that the chicks seem to get. It's adorable to watch them nodding off then falling over beak first. 

Welcome

This is a blog devoted to documenting the growth of our backyard chicken flock and ourselves in the process. We live just outside New Orleans on the Orleans/Jefferson Parish line. We have a small house with a decent sized yard and a garden that is every increasing in size. We both like the idea of living a more sustainable lifestyle and leaving less of a footprint on the world around us, one step at a time. 

Brandon grew up around chickens. His grandparents had them as well as many other animals and he got to enjoy the many benefits of helping raise poultry. Unfortunately, I did not. My friend Ellie mentioned that she had an urban chicken ranch in the lower garden district of New Orleans and a new idea came to life. We discussed the idea over a couple of weeks and decided that we would like to have our own small flock to raise and enjoy. Who doesn't want a pet that can make them breakfast? 

Brandon is a chef and makes the most wonderful dishes as well as gourmet quiche. I can only imagine how good it will be once we partake in the fruits of our labor. 

We both did a lot of research before we jumped in to buying our first chickens. We are fortunate that we live in Jefferson Parish because the ordinances regarding livestock in residential areas currently has no limit on the number of birds we can have in our flock as long as they are treated humanely and they live in a coop, house or run. One street over in Orleans parish, they have a strict law allowing maximum of 5 birds in a residential setting. 

Now that we knew how many birds we could have, we did more research to find out what breed of chickens we wanted to raise. We were fairly inexperienced with the wide variety of birds that were available and to the differences between them as well. What we did know is that we wanted a medium size bird that lays good size eggs, is heat tolerant and is a fairly docile bird to raise. Chickens that were easy on the eyes wouldn't be too bad either. With that in mind, we looked through many breeds and decided on a few that we liked: Buff Orpingtons, Americaunas or Easter Eggers, Rhode Island Reds and Brown Leghorns. We both really liked the idea of having Easter Eggers for their multi-colored eggs. Easter Eggers will lay blue, green, brown or pink eggs; each hen will only lay one color of egg and that just sounded awesome!

Since we both wanted the Easter Eggers, we looked into hatcheries that carried our specific breed and would also have a smaller minimum of chicks to be shipped. Chicks need other chicks around for security but they also provide another essential function, they keep each other warm. Most hatcheries have a 15-25 chick minimum, and since we wanted to stay small, we opted to have 8 shipped and to give two of them to our friend. 

One major consideration when buying chicken is age of the bird and gender. Generally you are able to buy pullets, cockerels or straight run chickens. Pullets are hens and cockerels are roosters. If you go with straight run chicks, you may get pullets, cockerels or both because they are not sexed before you purchase them. It is very hard to tell pullets from cockerels when they are day old chicks and even with a lot of experience in telling them apart, you could order females and end up with a male in the batch. 

We ended up finding Carter Legacy Farms a few states away in Loxley, AL and ordered our first 8 Ameraucana/Easter Egger chicks. Scott was my contact at Legacy Farms and he was friendly and knowledgeable. Our chicks are so healthy and active. If we order more chicks in the future, Legacy Farms would be the first place to start the search for new chicks. Chicks are shipped at one day old because there is only enough yolk in the chicks' system to keep them nourished for approximately 72 hours, so this is the window that chicks are generally shipped. Our little peepers were hatched on May 14, 2012 and arrived to us at a very early 7am on May 15, 2012. We had to go to the post office to pick them up and we were so excited! We arrived at the post office, rang the doorbell and told the woman that we were here to pick up the chicks. She said" Oh the nuggets? No, we ate them". She disappeared behind the door and I could hear nothing except chicks peeping away. She brought us a cardboard box with holes cut in the sides and a chorus of cheeps. 
This is the first viable photo with the box of peepers at the post office.
Nearly headless Jillian and nearly headless Brandon with chicks.
Do not let your mail carrier take photos of you and your new additions.
 We had decided beforehand on a few names that we would like for our chickens: Ira Bea (after Brandon's grandmother) Irene (after my grandfather's childhood chicken that he marked with lipstick  to identify her) Coq au Vanessa (after chicken cooked in wine) Sweet Pea (just because) Lucy (after Lucille Ball and because she has red fluff)and finally Scallop (because our friend Nick was going to name his child Scallop if we didn't intervene). The other two do not have names because they are going to new homes when they are a little bit older. 

7 of 8 peepers in their shipping box

Since the chicks will be growing so rapidly, we will be updating every few days.