Well, the swap meet did have a lot of chickens – all ages and kinds, but the chicks were primarily sold in quantities of 10 or more. We were bummed and a little uneasy about going home empty handed. That is when we ran into a guy who had a large crate with about 100 chicks. It was a motley assortment of 2-3 week old babies. They were his “barnyard mix”. In other words, he owned many different types of chickens, but they all ran together and thus breeds were mixed. He assured us that he did own both Marans and Americana’s (among many other’s), and was willing to sell us individual birds.
We were thrilled. Jonathan reached into this mess of feathers and pulled out 3 birds – one that had similar markings to a Maran, another that was our best guess at my Easter egg layer, and another black/white bird. The man was so encouraging and helpful to us started in the “chicken business” (or to just get rid of more) – he made us take a fourth. So, we picked out a nice orangish bird. We were proud owners of a grab bag of chickens. They were a bit older than we wanted, and obviously hadn’t spent much time with humans, but we were excited just the same.
The first issue was that we purchased our chicks while Jonathan was still in school, and we didn’t have a coop ready for them. We had designed the structure already but hadn’t started. We thought we would have time to build one while they were still little. Well, these little ones were growing quickly and needed to be outside. We put together a make-shift coop and run for them made out of our old puppy exercise pen attached to an outdoor dog crate. This allowed them space to roam, we could move it easily and they had a place to sleep.
We covered the whole thing with a second wire grate so it was protected from above…This bought us a little time on our construction of the coop. Inside the dog crate we put boxes full of pine shavings – to make little nest boxes. What we didn’t anticipate was that our babies preferred to sleep on top rather than inside of the boxes. This was the end of my little future blue egg layer, (who I had named Clara). Something – likely a raccoon – was able to reach in and wound/kill her while she was sleeping. I felt terrible. We just hadn’t protected them well, so it was truly our fault. Here is a picture of our love birds – Jonathan’s Maran and my Clara. This was when she was just starting to get her real feathers, so she looks a little mangy but she really pretty.
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