{"id":1294,"date":"2013-09-16T21:51:45","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T02:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/blog\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2017-04-19T06:12:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T11:12:24","slug":"we-got-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/2013\/we-got-chickens\/","title":{"rendered":"We Got Chickens!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week Andrea’s mom Deb, and her brother Matt came to Lubbock to wish Jude a belated 1st birthday, and spend some quality time with us. \u00a0Sunday night we sat outside, huddled around the chiminea roasting marshmallows and building s’mores. \u00a0At some point between bites of toastie brown mallows and pesky grey mosquitoes the conversation turned to chickens…<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Matt and Andrea had chickens when they were young. \u00a0To enrich their lives, Deb brought home 3 hens, for Andrea and Matt to raise and look after. \u00a0They had 1 black and 2 white hens who happily produced dozen after dozen of eggs (which btw, Andrea refused to eat cause she thought it was weird).<\/p>\n

This experience sparked a passion for chickens in Matt. His parents got him an instructional VHS video on raising chickens by Martha Stewart<\/a> which he watched over and over and over again one summer. \u00a0He also memorized the mail order catalog from McMurray Hatchery<\/a>\u00a0cover to cover. \u00a0This all made Matt somewhat of a chicken expert (to me at least), and he became an invaluable resource as I began to hatch my own plans for raising chickens…
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

I have for some months now expressed to Andrea my interest in getting chickens, but the response was always the same… “um no.” \u00a0But thanks to Andrea’s recent infatuation with Petunia Picklebottom<\/a>,\u00a0aka petunia, aka ppb, I now had a bargaining chip! \u00a0That night, she casually mentioned a petunia bag she’s been eyeing on eBay, \u00a0The Touring Tote in Peaceful Portofino:\"peaceful<\/a><\/p>\n

After some discussion, and lots of help from Matt and Deb, Andrea and I agreed that she could get her diaper bag if I could get my chickens!<\/p>\n

I spent the rest of the night looking up different breeds in a PDF version of McMurray Hatchery’s catalog, and Matt would tell me everything he knew about them. \u00a0Finally I decided I wanted to get barred Plymouth Rocks. Plymouth Rock being the breed, and barred the color, \u00a0they are stunningly beautiful birds, and eggcelent layers of big brow eggs (the one stipulation from Andrea: (“they have to lay brown eggs”).<\/p>\n

The next day I ordered 8 baby chicks online from MyPetChicken<\/a>. \u00a0They Hatched Sunday night (the same night we talked all about raising chickens while roasting mallows), I ordered them at noon Monday morning, they flew overnight (in an airplane) from Connecticut and arrived healthy and chirping at my post office Tuesday morning! (btw I got tons of stares in the post office, and everyone turned to look when I told the postal worker “i’m here to pick up my chickens”)<\/p>\n

On Monday, after I ordered my chicks, and before we dropped Matt off at the airport, we went to the local Tractor Supply Company<\/a>\u00a0and Matt helped me find all the supplies I needed to set up my baby chick nursery. \u00a0I built a small enclosure out of cardboard and placed it in the garage, where my baby chickidees will live and grow for the next few weeks until they are big enough to go outside in their coop.<\/p>\n

So far only two have names: Yellow, the runt of the litter, named by my nephew Conner, and Tyrone, the largest chick, named by my sister Jenni.<\/p>\n

The chicks are now one week and one day old. \u00a0I decided today to start this blog to share the joy and eggcitement of raising backyard chickens, and also in hopes that this will produce some communication between me and some friends and family I don’t connect with often enough… so please follow my Chicken Blog!<\/a>\u00a0 posts coming soon: “I got worms” , and “Chicken Nipples”<\/p>\n

FAQs:<\/p>\n

Q: Are you going to eat your chickens? \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0A: No, only their eggs!<\/p>\n

Q: Is Tyrone a girl? \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0A: Yes, all 8 of my chicks are girls, including Tyrone.<\/p>\n

Chicks at 2days old:<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Chicks 1week & 1day old:<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week Andrea’s mom Deb, and her brother Matt came to Lubbock to wish Jude a belated 1st birthday, and spend some quality time with us. \u00a0Sunday night we sat outside, huddled around the chiminea roasting marshmallows and building s’mores. \u00a0At some point between bites of toastie brown mallows and pesky grey mosquitoes the conversation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicken-blog","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41008,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/41008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reddickfamily.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}