Last Friday I was surprised to find these 5 newly hatched chicks walking around outside already, on their very first day of life.
This is my second year raising chickens for eggs (to eat, not sell), but I wasn't expecting any chicks because none of the hens who had previously set on nests had any luck hatching their eggs, last summer or this one, so it was exciting to see naturally hatched chicks for the first time, especially since they were unexpected! I had just under 20 total, but now there are a few more, and they're so adorable when they're this young and tiny. The mother hen seems to be a pretty good mom, and was feeding the chicks and showing them how to eat from day one.
She gave them little apple chunks which they gobbled right up:
Day 2, eating some chick food for breakfast in the coop:
On the morning of day 3 we were sadly down to 4 chicks, but so far the remaining 4 are still alive and doing well, healthy and growing. On the evening of day 3, right around dusk I got this super cute picture of 3 of the chicks poking their heads out from under mom, where they go to stay warm and sleep at night:
So much easier letting the mother hen do all the work and keeping the chicks warm naturally whenever they get cold, rather than keeping an indoor brooder at a constant 90 degrees with heat lamps for the first week before slowly dropping the temperature from there. When I raised chicks this way, they didn't even go outdoors until about 6 weeks old, but these are already running around outside in temperatures as cool as 40 degrees first thing in the morning, which is pretty awesome. Their first day outside was a high of only around 65 degrees.
The mother hen is a rare and extremely cold-hardy Canadian chicken breed called a Chantecler, but is not the genetic mother, though she seems to be doing a great job at being a mom regardless. Here they are on day 5, a couple cute pics of the chicks drinking some water:
And eating some food outside:
And here they are this morning - day 6 - a couple of the chicks already drinking with the other chickens even without their mom right there with them, kinda surprising I thought. Not even a week old yet, and they are already beginning to assimilate into the flock it seems, and all the other chickens including the rooster seem to be treating them with plenty of respect, even when the mom isn't right next to them to protect them:
I'm not entirely sure what type they are, but they've all got the same dad as I've only got one rooster right now, and it appears there are 3 different types of breed crosses, and I think one might even be a pure breed Hamburg, the breed of the dad and 3 of my hens. I also think the two chicks above are a cross with the little black and white hen pictured above on the left, which is a Lakenvelder. It sure will be interesting to see what they turn out to be and what they look like as they grow up and get their feathers though. Here's a couple pictures of the Hamburg rooster with his hens from this spring when there was still snow on the ground:
And, there's another hen sitting on another egg nest right now, same breed as the current mom, so if I'm lucky I might even get another hatch with a few more chicks in the next few days or week or so. They puff up their feathers really fat when they're setting on a nest, and only leave the nest briefly once a day to get food and water...
Hope everyone enjoyed the pictures - I'll try to post some more as these little guys grow up and if more chicks hatch...