On November 9th we let our Rare Breed Chicks from Meyer Hatchery explore outside of their coop for the first time. The birds were exactly 2 months old and they seemed totally ready for their Maiden Voyage.
They have been inside their coop with complete ventilation and room for a heat lamp almost their entire lives. They seemed hesitant to go outside at first and then their instincts took over and explored in groups and began to scratch around and seem comfortable spreading their wings, literally, and fly.
Our flock of birds, as a whole from Meyer Hatchery, have been really healthy. We only lost 1 chick out of the 20 we ordered in the first week of arrival. And that I think was more because we had a heat wave towards the end of that week, the heat lamp should have been turned off sooner, and I believe the chick got over heated and died. We ordered 20 birds because we were expecting, or were realistic to the possibility of 2 or 3 chicks not surviving the first week, but we are happy to report that 19 out of 20 of them have survived. There was one other bird of the same breed that died, that we weren’t sure would make it, however she has survived and is thriving. We named her Tiny Tim because she was always been much smaller than her 2 other breed siblings and all other chicks in the flock.
After releasing them, we gave them a few hours to explore on their own without interruption or interaction with our mature chicken flock or dog. I will be uploading a video and post separately on the mature birds meeting the chicks for the first time and their interactions because I think that is is so interesting to watch and is deserving of its own moment.
I uploaded a video to YouTube of almost 13 minutes real time footage of my daughter and I releasing the chickens and what it really looked like. I didn’t edit this video at all, it is basically like watching a livecam. I did this because when we lived in our apartment these are the types of videos we enjoyed watching the most as a family. It was a real look into the life and experience we were dreaming of and added fuel to the fire for us achieving our goal and reminding us of our Why we were choosing to move out of state again. Which was:
For the freedom to have moments like these with our family.
See you soon with the next post and video <3