The Return of the Chickens!
April 16, 2025
The Return of the Chickens!
Hello and welcome to the Tart Family Farm! Yes, we have ten little chicks who aren’t so little anymore and this is their first appearance on the blog. Okay, seriously, I’ve been insanely busy for the last what… I don’t know, all of competition season? And that was far too many adverbs for one sentence.
We have 10 barnyard mix chickens, aged 37 to 43 days old. We incubated 16 fertile eggs and of those, ten hatched out; each was greeted by squeals and yips of “I hear one!” and “pips, mom, pips!” or Laud’s, “EEEEEESSSSS!” yells as he discovered they were soft. (Then it was “EEEEESSSSS please!” every time I was in the cabin and he heard a chick peep.)
Our chickens were very happy with a big box, a heating pad warming up the back, and a smaller box with pine and oak shavings deep enough to lose a chick in for about two weeks. They went on daily outings to clean their box, peck the ground and discover the sun was warm enough to sleep in, and run under the cabin in a chicken game of hide-and-seek. Finally, they started pecking the box tops to make it open just enough so they could escape – one is named “Nemo Becky” after the Becky in “Finding Dory”
That was just in time for the aviary & baby chicken nursery to be finished!
Welcome to full-time outside! One of our neighbor’s cats paid us a visit the first night they were all out in the aviary by squealing pitifully as it attacked the aviary all over looking like one of those weasel-on-the-ball dog (or were they for kids?) toys from the 80s. It squalled and clawed at the aviary from near midnight until dawn, two other cat buddies joined him and Louis and I laughed from the open window. It is definitely predator proof.
Mr. Parakeet thought he was king of chicks and amused himself by darting down to the ground level which made all 10 chickens jump under their hutch in terror. Maybe Mr. Parakeet thought he was teaching these babies how to avoid predators (Lucas suggested). Thea’s thought was, “hahaha, Mom, he loves pretending he’s bigger than them!”
Kimmy said the chickens hatching filled her with hope.
I couldn’t agree more! I’m so excited to officially be back to real farming! We have minecraft boxes full of produce, chickens, and parakeets! Yippity-Doo-Da!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart
