Chicks, Chicks and More Chicks

   We bought a big incubator earlier this year. Ever since then it seems as if we always have some kind of chicks. They are either in a rubbermaid container in the bathroom so they are warm enough or they are out the back door in the stall area.

    If anyone ever wants any chicks feel free to contact us. Here is our email - Cool Peppers. We can even run your eggs through our incubator if you like.

We have also started raising Coturnix Quail. What a fun little bird they are. They start laying eggs at 7 or 8 weeks of age!

Notice the one standing tall in the middle of the pic - well, we are curious as to what color that one is going to be. It is really pretty right now and different than all the others.

This is a pen of 41 chicks (39 quail and 2 silkie chicks). We need to move them into a bigger pen really soon here!

Why Colored Eggs?

   One thing you might notice as the posts are put up on this blog, are that most of the chickens we have lay a brown, blue or green colored egg. The reason for this is because we have a friend that is very allergic to duck eggs. So what do colored chicken eggs have to do with his allergy?
      Well, we also raise Muscovey ducks. Since the Muscovey has a white shelled egg, we thought one simple solution would to be have all colored egg layers in the chicken department. So, the rule is that no white eggs ever come into the kitchen. When we collect eggs, we only collect the browns, greens and blues for eating. All of the white eggs are either left in one of the many nests that are seeming to turn up everywhere on our property or collected for the new incubator we recently purchased (more about that later).
     Anyway, we have a growing collection of colored egg layers that we are hoping to raise - Lavender Orpingtons, Lemon Cuckoo Orpingtons, Wheaten Ameracanas, Speckled Sussex and Silver Laced Wyandottes to name just a few. We'll try to give a little write-up about each as time goes on. For now, here are a few pics of some of the new chicks.

New Blog, New Chicks

     We are somewhat new to raising purebred birds. We are excited to learn and have fun along the way. We have an incubator and we hope to hatch out several varieties of birds - Black Australorps, Production Reds, White Leghorns, Barred Rocks and others. We also hope to hatch Toulouse Geese, Muscovey ducks and maybe even a few Guineas.

     For starters, here are a few pics of a Production Red hen that went broody on us about 21 days ago. She has hatched out 2 chicks and has 4 more chicken eggs under her and about 20 duck eggs!
 
    Here are a few pics of the first 2 chicks: