New Chicks, New Challenges

Before we got chickens (well before I do anything really..) I did a huge amount of research. What they need to survive, how I can be a good chicken parent, how an egg is made, and all that fun stuff. When we adopted 7 adult hens I worried that I wasn’t prepared enough. (I think that was the anxiety speaking on my behalf) Adult hens are very different from baby chicks. I went back and forth with myself whether or not to get more pullets or just get new chicks. Pullets, for those who don’t know, are teenage female chickens. Not quite hens yet since they haven’t laid an egg yet. A male is called a cockerel.

I bit the bullet and got chicks. What spurred that on was an impulse buy at Tractor Supply Company (TSC). I saw the brooder plate on sale and baby chick food and that’s all she wrote. I did not get baby chicks at TSC for a few reasons. First, I can’t have roosters in my township. Even though my home is not right on my neighbors, it is within earshot of a rooster crow. TSC is notorious for mislabeling chicks. Some are labeled straight run which means they have no idea what the sex is. However even those labeled as hens can be roosters in the mix. Second, TSC chicks are known to sometimes die and I have heard stories of them not replacing the chick and forcing you to buy the full 6. In New York you have to buy 6 chicks at a time. They are flock animals and need friends. This also prevents them from being a whim Easter present and then after they get a little older they get abandoned (you’d be surprised that this happens a lot. And I mean A LOT!). A third reason I didn’t get chicks at TSC is the employees are not trained in this field. Unless they personally own chickens, assume they know nothing. I once heard a TSC employee tell a couple that the reason chickens die from heart attacks is because eggs contain a lot of cholesterol. Insert confused face here. That’s simply not true. And not how the anatomy of a hen works but that’s besides the point.

I tried to get my little bundles of joy from a reputable place. And it was, but issues happen. This place was great. They guarantee that if I got a rooster in the mix they would rehome him for me. If for some reason one of the chicks died in the first week they would replace her for me.

So I decided to get one olive egger, two Easter Eggers, one Mystic Morans, one silver laced Wyandotte, and one golden laced Wyandotte. I brought them home and I set them in there Bruder with a little bit of newspaper on the bottom and their heat plate. I noticed right away one of them shaking their head quite often. After doing a little bit of research, as I’m know to do, I found she may have a neurological disorder. But I brush it off as her playing, and decided just to monitor her. As she got older though she did have a seizure. She also has a hard time seeing depth perception wise and has a hard time finding her flock when she’s free ranging and they wander a few feet from her. Another one of the chicks in the first couple of weeks developed a Crossbeak. That brought a whole new set of challenges. After a while she could no longer eat the dry food as her beak wouldn’t allow her to pick it up as easily. After joining a forum for special needs chickens and cross beaks I decided that the best course of action was to give her a mash of her own feed. This was trial and error. For a while she wasn’t really filling her crop. I believe this made her needy, always wanting to be with “mom and dad” (my husband and I. Until I finally learned the best consistency was between a cookie dough consistency and a wet slop. When I noticed her crop finally filling it was a huge relief. I did learn that many people separate their Crossbeak and special-needs chickens away from the flock. I never did this. I wanted her to feel like a normal Chickens the best way she could. To this day she is still outside with her flock eating, grazing with them, and enjoying life. Because of this in her flock she is head hen. It’s going to be a challenge when I integrate the new flock in with the older chickens. However, they do free range together and there’s been no huge fighting. Some chasing and packing but nothing bad. My only concern is that all the chickens enjoy the mash food that she eats. And the older chickens may devour her food. But I will have to monitor and perhaps make large batches so everyone can have some. Stay tuned as I learn through again trial and error what will work best for my little Crossbeak Latte and her sister Ristretto.