the chickens first three weeks on pasture {part one}

this is a video from about two weeks ago when we moved our chicks out to pasture.  it is remarkable how much bigger they are today than in this video.  i'll make sure to post it soon.

seven am at the backyard moon.  farmer root and farmhand nick wake up with me at first light to do the deed.  our friend dan, from darby farms, reccomended we transfer the young chicks into crates while it was still dark, in order to catch them in as stress freee of a way as possible.  not having crates, we came up with the half brilliant/half moronic plan of just transporting them in the bed of my truck.  for the most part, it worked pretty well, but i think we can work out a few kinks for next time. 

for those of you in the athens or atlanta area, make sure you look into buying your chickens from darby farm. 

the chickens at backyard moon

photos by olivia

one hundred and fifty chicks first day at school

what an amazing thing.  one hundred and fifty peeping little puffs of feather—all in  a box—and waiting at the post office like an amazon shipment.  much like everything else on the farm, things that sound simple inevitably turn into complex challenges.  after debating back and forth on what sort of structure to build to house the baby chicks, we decided to go with one similar to what we saw over at darby farms earlier in the week.

we spent two days clearing out a cluttered green house, building a wall, enclosing the place with chicken wire, filling it with hay and bedding, and rigging up a lighting system.

our biggest concern, after containing the chicks in a dry, warm environment, is to prevent predators from snacking their way through our flock.  rats, our biggest concern, can enter without much effort and pick off baby chicks—one by one—without much detection.

the video below is an overview of the two days leading up to our chicks arrival, as well as their pickup at the post office, their arrival at the farm, and their first feed and water.     



peep, peep

today's visit to darby farms was well worth the drive.  after seeing dan's simple, clean, and easy-to-manage greenhouse brooder model, we chalked our initial plans of building a stand alone wooden structure with a tin roof, and decided to clear out a section of our greenhouse instead.

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cluck, cluck

early this morning, after checking for damage from last night’s thunder storms, farmer root and I are taking a drive to put some eyes on our friend daniel’s chicken operation, darby farms.  two facts bring us here:  first, dan raises the best chickens.  second, root and I have one hundred and fifty baby chickens arriving from a hatchery sometime in the next three days, and no experience to speak of.  stack that against dan’s quality of pasture birds, and it’s easy to see why we want to pay him a visit before designing and building our brooder today.

a brooder is what you use to heat the baby chicks during the first few (or many) weeks of their lives before they are stout enough to withstand life on the pasture.  “in natural brooding, this heat is provided by the chick’s mother, a broody hen.”^  while some resources recommend five, or six, or more weeks of life inside the brooder house, dan’s birds are out to pasture on average at just two to three weeks of age, depending on the weather.  this standard will be our goal as well.

flying by the seat of our pants, we are.  the chickens are shipping today, and we are building their brooder today.  not ideal, but good enough.  baby chicks in a few days, brooder today.  gotta keep moving forward.

^success with baby chicks, by Robert plamondon