Okay, I can come up with a whole bunch of stupid headings w/ the word chick in them. Try doing a Google search with "chick" in it and a whole lot of questionable content comes up.
So the girls are 4 days old today and have already doubled in size. They make the sweetest little cheep cheep noises. It seems unbelievable that their cheep will eventually change to bowk. What I also learned is that the colors of their adult feathers may have nothing to do with the color they are now.
A lot of people have asked how I got chickens in NYC and are amazed when I tell them that they came through the mail. I thought I was going to have to pick them up at the post office, but they were delivered to my door. I am lucky that they came so quickly because the chicks were healthy and very perky.
Here's a photo of the inside of the shipping box. The green goo is a nutritional gel that kept them fed and hydrated during their journey. Chicks actually don't need to eat or drink the first few days after they hatch, which is why hatcheries are able to mail them. The sooner they arrive the better, because these guys are remarkable eaters and growers.
This little one is Edie (Sedgwick). She's the sweetest of the group. On the first day when she was held for a few seconds, she would drift off to sleep on your hand. Her markings make her look a little like a chipmunk. And there are few things cuter than a little chipmunk. She is called an Easter Egger chick, which is kind of a mutt that is derived from the Araucana chicken. It isn't a purebred, but it does lay the same blue/green eggs of the Araucana chickens. If you look at
these photos of Araucanas, you will see the wacky ear-tufts on their faces. I hope my girls will have such distinguished features.
This little pee-wee is Louise (Lou Reed) and she's an Easter Egger also. What she lacks in size, she makes up for in brattiness. She has the bratty little sister in her (and I'm speaking from experience). When her sisters fall asleep, she chirps her head off and deliberately wakes them up. I don't know if her motivation stems from loneliness or sadism, but she's got quite a personality. I'm putting my money on her to be the top of the pecking order.
This is Andie (Andy Warhol). This photo was taken today, so she looks bigger and older than the others. She's the middle sized chick, w/ Edie being the biggest. She looks like a cross between an ostrich and an alpaca. Her long, gangly neck looks positively broken when she's sleeping. Enough to make a new mommy freak out. She is a silver laced polish chick.
Here is a photo of what she will look like as an adult.
They eat mostly their chick crumbles and drink their chick gatorade (water w/ electrolytes and vitamins in it). I gave them some uncooked steel cut oatmeal and they LOVE it. They will race out of their brooder cage to peck it off my floor. I put it on my hands, which makes them hop up and eat out of them. I want to get them used to me. Already they associate me with food.
The names are based on Andy Warhol and members of his factory. I think that Polish chickens look like Andy Warhol with their wacky hairdos. And I will have "factory" eggs, although these gals will be the farthest from factory hens you could imagine.
