I was afeared I was goin' to have to work Saturday but I made good enough progress on my project that the boss said I could come home, so, after a 9 hour day Friday, I hopped in Little Blue and took off for the house! It has been a beautiful weekend, weather wise, and is noticeably cooler up here than where I'm working. The fall feeling is definitely in the air here. Jack had picked the last big watermelon and had it waiting on me. I had one other very large one and a couple about half this size. The first one was pretty darn good; very sweet despite the fact the flesh was not as dark as I thought Black Diamonds were supposed to be.
This second melon weighed in at 38 pounds; the first was around 32 I think. However, this one did not taste good. It was mushy and basically a disappointment.
So, we pitched it off the deck to the chickens, making sure not to squash any of them! They LOVE watermelon. Although, they did not attack this one in their normal voracious frenzy. They had already stuffed themselves with a smaller melon and had been eating bugs all day. Jack had let them out a few hours earlier than normal since we were going to be here all day and all.
And the new babies came in!!! They arrived Thursday morning early and Jack picked them up at the post office. They are sooo cute! But hopefully they will grow quickly into big, plump, non-cute, tasty birds. They are quite active, scurrying around their cage all day.
They do take naps as you can see by that one passed out in the corner. Since we ordered from McMurray Hatchery they always send you one extra, in case of a mortality I guess, and one free, exotic chick. You don't know what it is though, until it grows up. This one is very cute.
They are all doing well so far and began gobbling food just as soon as Jack put them in the cage. These are the Cornish Rocks and I am anxious to see how they do. We found a local feed supply that grinds their own formula of a non-mediated starter feed. It's not organic, unfortunately, but it's the best we can find right now without paying a fortune for feed. Maybe later I can come up with a more organic formula. McMurray lets you opt out of any vaccinations also, so I did not have that done. Jack scrubbed their cage within the coop house good and sterilized it before they arrived, so hopefully they will stay healthy.
Well, time to get some stuff done around here before I have to head back this evening.
6 comments:
Love watching those tiny chicks nod off like that. Would that we could tune out the world so easily some days, huh.
Hey Caroline! you got that right! I wish I could just drop off to sleep as fast as I flop down, like they seem to do! lol!
I use to get Cornish rocks. But I decided I would rather have one of the old time breeds. I just could not stand raising chickens that just sit around and stuff their faces all day long. They can not even be bothered to move out of their own excrement a lot of the time.
Needless to say, they rapidly get un-cute. But they are very good a turning feed into meat.
Hey chieftain! yeah, I don't know how these are going to turn out but they are supposed to be from a very healthy, active stock. I just felt I should try them once myself before deciding and I may go your route too if they turn out to be just meat on 2 sticks. :)
Aww the chicks are so cute but everything is in the food chain and so are these guys (and girls?). Glad you got a break for the weekend and cooler temps too.
Good luck with your chicks. I gather your are going to kill and eat them at about 8 weeks.
They are sure cute at this age.
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