New family members

Just last Monday we went and purchased 30 darling little chickens. 20 New Hamshire and 10 Australorp. They are amazing.

A valuable lesson was learned on the day. At the moment  we are in the very near middle of winter, and even though we don’t get extreme cold weather, but it can get down to around 5°c at night and around 19°c during the day. Now and then or at least regularly at the moment, the days have been quite cool and chilling to the bone winds. Little chickens can get cold very easily, and you need to keep them warm. We took a cardboard box with sawdust in the base, and a couple blankets to wrap the box in. This was not good enough for the baby chickens as it was a very chilly day and what we should have done is wrap a hot water bottle in the box, so they weren’t just relying on their tiny little bodies to keep each other warm.

So try and remember that the warmer you can keep your chickens right from the time you pick them up, till the time you get them home and into your brooder, it is very important to keep them warm. We had an hour and half drive to get them home to the warm brooder and should have thought of a way to keep them warm.