Brood is complete!

My new brood of chickens is now complete. I have my “old” chicks, which are now a bit more than a week old. Last night the new black chicks arrived. You can see the size difference. That’s how much the old babies grew in the last week. After seeing the new chicks and the old chicks together, I can also see how the old chicks are also stronger and more active than the newer little ones.

The new babies are still just a few days old and are still essentially pretty clueless about everything. They have learned how to drink water and eat food but that’s about the extent of their knowledge at the moment.

The newer babies are black, sex-linked chicks, which means they are a cross between a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen. All my chickens do or will lay brown eggs. The color of a chicken’s egg shell is determined by the color of the chicken’s ear. Brown chickens tend to be larger than the white chickens raised by commercial growers, so the eggs are usually bigger, too. My old chickens lay jumbo sized eggs, so I can make a one-egg omelet that’s only slightly smaller than a two-egg omelet from a commercially grown white hen.

So far all the babies are doing well. The old babies weren’t thrilled with the arrival of the new babies, but that only lasted for 5-10 minutes. Soon, they were all getting along just fine.