Lethargic baby chick

As I mentioned in my post before, we got three pet chickens, that will be half everyone else's size and fancy looking! We are very excited about them and can't wait till the grow up so we can see how they will look. However, one of them wasn't looking too good since day one. Here she is - eyes always closed, sitting in one spot, never eating or drinking, and looking very weak. 

I did some research and found out that besides some chicken vitamins, I can use sugar water to give her some energy and get her started. So I used organic raw sugar and lukewarm water and gave it to her using a dropper. She wasn't opening her beak very well at first but when she got taste of the water, she started drinking it more. I gave her half the dropper and put her back in the box.

At first she was looking around and then all of a sudden she started walking around, she found water and spent lots of time drinking it. She slowly found her way to the feeder and ate some food from the ground. 

It has been over a week now since I treated her with simple sugar water and she is as alive as can be. (the above picture is from the same day I treated her - I will update her photo on the Facebook tomorrow if I get a good shot) She is the smallest of them all but the cutest and the biggest warrior. You should see her trying to fight the crowd to get to the feeder! i am amazed how this simple "medicine" worked. And I am happy we saved her. Now we have to think of her name :-)

Baby chicks video update

Now our baby chicks are eating worms! You can see in my previous post that we got about 1000 earth worms and that we built them a little earth worm farm. With time they started multiplying and now the baby worms are perfect size for these baby chicks to eat as a treat! My husband is having lots of fun with these ladies so take a look at a video he made.

Our new baby chicks arrived!

My husband and I decided to expand our Little Backyard Farm with some new addition - baby chicks! We currently have broilers, layers, and pet chickens. 

First, meet one of our pet chickens - Pingu. This is the first time we actually have pet chickens. We got three - Pingu is black, Brownie is brown, and the last one doesn't have a name yet because we are not sure if she is going to make it. She is acting a bit lethargic and we are trying to fix that. We believe these are Bantam chickens.

Here is one of our 10 Cornish chickens. We chose these to be our broilers. They will be ready in about 8 weeks. We still have to build the chicken tractor that they will move into. 

Here is the Rhode Island Red. We have these and one more breed we think is Americana to be our new layers. I really like my current layers - they are so friendly and calm. I hope these will be just like them.

At this point the new babies reside in our garage and they will stay there for at least the next three weeks. I will post a detailed description of their current home.

They seem to thrive and grow from day to day.

Birds' helpers

Spring is here even though the temperatures haven't really cooperate with the season and I heard our first birds flying by and socializing again. It's their time of the year to build nests and start expanding their families. We thought we would help them a bit! You can too and here is how:

You will need:

left over pieces of yarn

suet bird feeder

This is the easiest thing ever - just cut up some left over yarn and place it into a suet feeder. Hang it up in a secluded location so birds can freely pick their nest material. Kids had fun filling the feeder, it made for fun project.

I can't wait to see some color in the nests around our backyard!

I got this idea from this Juniper Moon Farm blog.

Treasured Thursdays - Beach Time

"Near the sea, 

we forget to count the days..."