And now, without further adieu, the chickens

We ordered our chickens from My Pet Chicken in early February, expecting delivery the first week of April. Thinking we were super smarties, we ordered 6 chicks, assuming some would die in shipping, and perhaps one or two would end up being male. On April 1st, a postal worker came to the door with a madly chirping box. Hysterical. She was slightly confused, but cracking up, and I was jumping up and down like some kind of moron. I finished setting up the brooder (only the best for our girls), and Eric came home at lunch for the big release. (While waiting for Eric I was using the computer in the basement for a while, and the chicks were so loud I could hear them chirping all the way down there. Thankfully, they shut up after a while.) So, Eric came home, and we opened up the box, found all of the chicks alive, and transferred them to the brooder. (For the record, the chickens were all born March 30, 2009.)

We had ordered one red sex link, one silver laced wyandotte, one easter egger, one barred rock, and two australorps. The Colonel (the red sex link, closeup at left) soon showed herself to be a bitch-chicken, the most aggressive and territorial of all of them and earned her name within the first few weeks. The Chairman (also at left) seemed to be second in command, and was breifly called "Ducky" which was later replaced by her current name. Interestingly, she was a hulking beast of a chick - by far the largest - and has actually ended up the smallest of the adult chickens.

At right are the chicks at 4 weeks - they had begun to feather out pretty well by this point, and were happily roosting in their brooder (from left to right: the Chairman, the SLW Matzoh Ball, the Barred Rock Pol Pot Pie, and the Colonel; underneath: the two australorps we later gave away). As it turns out, they had feathered out enough to fly a little, which of course wasn't obvious until one escaped (below). Covering the brooder with chicken wire was an easy fix. This, however, did not stop the incessant wing flapping that later caused the entire office to be covered in a super-fine pine shaving dust.

By 6-7 weeks (below) the monsters were getting filthy, the office was covered in dust, and we were really looking forward to getting them the hell out of the house.