The chicks are three weeks old now…and still giving me constant entertainment. Raising baby chicks has given me a new purpose in life. I’ve got extra pep in my step. I am the annoying person who talks about their chickens to anyone who shows the slightest interest, or anyone who happens to make eye contact.

FoShizzle still steals the daily show…this little chick has so much quirky it’s like she’s an extraterrestrial being:

So I guess my new purpose in life is raising baby aliens. And I can only post so many photos of Fo without risking becoming the Fo Show. (there are more here if you want to see them.) And there are other baby chicks so I should give them some equal air time so they don’t feel left out…

Our two buff brahma chicks are named Miss Plump and Sunny. They are just gorgeous, but they are also so startlingly skittish. Whenever I pick one up they just squawk and squawk. It’s very dramatic. I hope they warm up to us eventually. If they don’t I might need counseling.

Our two Barred Rocks are M-LO and Henrietta. They are cute in their own little awkward Velociraptor-ish way. M-Lo is half the size of all our other chicks…but she’s spunky. Not sure why she’s so small but that’s how she got the name M-LO…Boo named her “my little one.” Whenever I feed the chicks from my hand M-LO grabs food and runs around peeping like a maniac, as if the sky is falling.

I love the Barred Rocks feathers coming in….they add a new row of black and white every few days. Aren’t they so sweet sleeping? I so want to just crawl in and snuggle with them…but they are chickens.

And then there’s Rey. She’s our lone Welsummer chick since we lost Whittle. And she’s very much a loner, but very smart and very tame. She’s the only one that will eat out of my hand if I’m holding her.

Rey is also like twice the size of everyone else, but doesn’t use her size to her advantage. She’s a gentle giant…my Martha Dumptruck. And I would have named her Martha Dumptruck, but Boo insisted on Rey because “she’s just like Rey in Star Wars, a scavenger, a loner, a survivor.” I couldn’t argue with that.

(You can still be Martha Dumptruck when no one’s around.)

And I can’t forget Ditto…our other Polish Frizzle. Ditto is probably more of a diva than FoShizzle:

Ditto is also the most daring of all the chicks. When I sit in front of the box she jumps onto the water jug and stares out at me. I can see her little chicken mind spinning as she looks me in the eyes. She knows there’s another world beyond the edge of her cardboard box. She has tried to make the jump to me, but it startled me and I moved backwards and she missed. Ditto can definitely be trained…maybe she’ll be my agility chicken champion. Do they have chicken trials?

*****

They’ve been living in a big refrigerator box. One side folds down halfway when we want to kneel down and play with them. I’ve found that the easiest way to keep it clean (so that they aren’t sleeping in poop) is to spread a layer of newspaper and then cover that with a layer of paper towels. I add a few more paper towels here and there throughout the day so that they have new clean areas. The next day I lay down newspaper again and start the process over with the paper towels. At the end of the week it all rolls up easily into one large wad and I toss it and start again. There’s no smell or dust to worry about.

We also added a piece of lucite to the side so that the chickens could look out at us, and so that we could look in without coming in as big scary monster from overhead. It’s like reality TV, and it’s the favorite channel in our house:

Or maybe we are the favorite channel?

I made the chicks a little roost recently out of an old ruler and some wood scraps. They must be little genius prodigy chickies…they figured out roosting on their own.

This morning Boo and I decided to make a little chicken tractor for them (or maybe it’s a chunnel…a chicken tunnel). It was such a nice day and we thought they’d love the warm sun. They stood in shock for about 20 minutes but then pecked happily at the grass for the rest of their outing.

“There must be some mistake. We are not outdoor chickens.”

Catching them to bring them back in was another story. They definitely did not want to come back in and they are fast little stinkers.

Meet FoShizzle the Polish Frizzle…one of our baby chicks. All of our baby chicks are adorable but this one just catches your eye a little more than the others. We call her Fo for short. She has a perfect little heart on her head:

She’s constantly entertaining us with her antics and I love thinking up captions for her funny photos:

Slow news day.

When you are ready for the group photo but no one else is.

Angry Fo

Ninja skills

My miniatures are just her size:

I had so many cute videos of her falling asleep…

Monday. The struggle is real. #bantamchicks #bantamchickens #polishfrizzlechicks #raisingchickens

A video posted by @foshizzlethepolishfrizzle on Apr 4, 2016 at 8:26am PDT

…that I decided to set up her own Instagram account. She has almost 700 followers already:

She’s thrilled:

I could just sit and watch her forever. I’m still sharing her photos on my own Instagram account but not all of them. You can follow FoShizzle here if you want to watch a baby Polish Frizzle all day. She’ll be a chicken before I know it.

I love when all the baby chicks fall asleep cuddling. When Fo finally does fall asleep she likes to be right in the middle of them all:

You can read more about the chicks and the building of our new chicken coop here!

All my dreams have come true…I am raising baby chickens. In the past few months I’ve read to the end of the Internet about raising chickens.

I don’t think I’ve been so excited for something in a very long time. I felt like an expectant mother awaiting their arrival. The moment I was notified that they had shipped I had all sorts of worries: Were they in a dark semi truck? Did they have little peep holes to look out of to get their bearings? Did the postal workers reassure them as they moved the box around?

On Monday of last week I was notified that my chickens had hatched and shipped. They flew on a plane overnight in a small box with straw padding and a heat pack.

On Tuesday a call came from the Asheville Post Office. The postal woman told me that my baby chicks had arrived and they would be on a truck to Bryson City the next day, but she offered to put them on a truck to Sylva and I could pick them up that same afternoon instead if I wanted. Brett just happened to be in Asheville and I asked him to run by the Sylva Post Office on his way home.

Brett: For what?

Me: Our new baby chickens. And don’t you dare open that box until you get home. They’ll imprint on you.

Brett: Imprint?

Me: Like in Twilight…werewolf bonding. They’ll think you’re their mother, but I’m their mother. It will be too confusing for them to meet you first. 

Brett: I wouldn’t even think about meeting them before you.

A few hours later we got a tiny peeping box:

Welcome home babies! They were born on Easter! ???? #bantamchicks #babychickens #thecooponhospitalhill

A video posted by Ashley Hackshaw (@lilblueboo) on Mar 29, 2016 at 1:18pm PDT

We introduced them to their new home where they’ll stay for the next few weeks. The first week they have to be kept at 95 degrees, and 90 degrees the next week, and 85 the next and so on. We hung a heat lamp from a camera tripod inside the large box:

We are using paper towels as bedding right now, I think it’s easier to clean up. We’ll switch to pine shavings when they get a little bigger. It’s easy to clean such a big box because I just move the tripod heat lamp contraption to the other side and the baby chicks follow the heat so I can clean up the opposite side.

All they do right now is eat, drink and sleep. They are just the cutest things I’ve ever seen. I wake up and check on them all through the night. I check their little behinds for pasty butt which is something they can actually died from: dried poop stopping up their insides!

In our little flock we ended up with 8 Polish Frizzles, 2 Welsummers, 2 Buff Brahmas, and 3 Barred Rocks. We gave away 1 Barred Rock and 6 Polish Frizzles to local friends. We started with a flock of eight babies. This little gal just cracks me up. We call her FoShizzle the Polish Frizzle. Her little bouffant on the top of her head will turn into a plume of feathers! I love the heart on her head:

The Buff Brahmas are so fluffy…they look like they are wearing bustles underneath their feathers. The one on the right is a Welsummer:

This week we are starting to renovate the Old Depot into a coop. We are building a wall in the middle of the building to separate the coop from the potting shed:

The inside coop will have a small entrance from the outside chicken run we also have to build. We excavated the right side last week so that we can add wire and wood and concrete to make the run predator proof:

I think I already need a new iPhone…just to dedicate to chicken photos and videos. It’s like having my own personal sitcom to watch all day. I get nothing done around her anymore. I could sit and watch them forever…their little eyelids, their tiny wings, their small little chests moving up and down as they sleep. They’ll even eat out of my hand.

Brett: So how long will it take to recoup our investment in all of this from the eggs?

Me: Oh, um…sorry, we’ll never recoup what I’ve already spent on these chickens.

Brett: Ha. I figured.

Me: But it’s so worth it. Look how happy I am!

Brett: I know, but do the chickens really need a chicken swing? 

Me: Wouldn’t you want a chicken swing if you were a chicken?

Brett: And a chicken harness?

Me: I think I should train them for walks in town every once in a while. 

Brett: What happens when they get old and stop laying eggs?

Me: We’ll have a nursing home for chickens.

And we will have a nursing home for chickens. I just hope we can keep them safe for that long…from hawks and raccoons and all the other threats in the rural mountains. We are doing everything we can think of to prepare a safe haven for them, but we know there will inevitably be some heartache. I didn’t expect it to come so soon though. We lost one of our baby chicks two days ago. Whittle was tinier than the rest and wouldn’t eat or drink from the time we got her:

I held a medicine dropper in front of her beak for hours. I offered her everything the Internet said might help her. Nothing worked. I could see the life slipping out of her as she grew weaker and weaker. The other chicks would peck at her and walk over her causing her to stand up quickly and try to move out of their way, even with her eyes closed. One chick flipped her over and she couldn’t right herself. I scolded him for being so cruel and naughty. I built a small divider to keep the other chicks from her so that she could rest without worry. As her breathing grew labored that night I refused to go to bed, worried that she would die all by herself. I still tried to coax her into drinking sugar water but she wouldn’t raise her head. I put her in my shirt to keep her warm. She nestled in above my bra and I sang softly to her. I told her over and over in a whisper how much her new family loved her, even for such a short time. It was heartbreaking to feel her dying. I prayed to God to not let her suffer anymore and to just take her to heaven and a few seconds later he did. She stretched out her feet and neck just like Diesel our dog did when he died and then left her earthly body behind. She was so sweet, tiny and cute. She looked just like a little chipmunk. It rained yesterday and we couldn’t bury her so today her tiny body finally got a place of rest:

Despite the heartache, this now flock of seven has already brought so much joy to us. I could die tomorrow and I would die with a full heart. There is a real risk of me becoming a hermit….surrounding myself with chickens. And gardening. And found objects.

Me: I know what I’m going to be like when I’m old.

Brett: Tell me.

Me: I’ll be the woman with the two long gray braids under a large straw sunhat….and overalls….who tends to the animals and garden all day. 

Brett: That will be okay with me.

Me: I guess the only thing that would change from now is that I’ll have long gray hair. Everything else has already happened. Oh, and I’ll make sun tea, in a huge oversized mason jar. 

Maybe by that time I will have finally convinced Brett that we need a goat, a donkey and a few bunnies. And I’d love a sloth. And an orchard. Maybe beehives…if I can get over my fear of bees. Oh gosh…I do hope the chickens end up laying some eggs. That was my whole powerpoint presentation to Brett and Boo for why we should get them (along with all the free fertilizer and pest control we’ll get from them too). I stress out every time I buy eggs in the grocery store…it’s hard to find a humane egg where the chickens roam freely and are treated well. And eggs in the grocery store can be up to 60 days old. My chickens will have a chicken swing, and fresh herb lined nests, and a family that loves them. Maybe if they are happy they will lay happy eggs. And it will take at least one more sad chicken out of the factory system….that will make the investment worth every penny.