Raising Chickens: Out With the Old, In With the New

Reader Contribution by Becky And Andy
Published on March 10, 2010
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Our first batch of 18 chicks is over a month old now. They have most of their baby fuzz gone and were very ready for a larger home. Besides that, we were expecting 95 new babies from McMurray Hatchery.

Since we are raising the birds for our friends Dick and Tracy, we wanted to be sure they had enough hens for a good laying flock. With our less than 50 percent hatch ratio the first time around, we encouraged them to order day old chicks for us to raise.

When Tracy’s friend heard about a farmer willing to raise “day-olds” up to a few months old, they wanted in on that deal. On top of that, Andy and I really wanted to take the opportunity to get our hands on a breed of laying hen that we’d been researching for more than a year. More on that later.

Finally, there were 42 Americauna eggs approaching day 21 in the incubator and we needed to get the kiddy pool ready once again for a host of tiny fluff balls.

So, out with the old chicks and in with the new.

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