Bringing home baby chicks made our little farmhouse feel like a homestead.

We’d been talking about it for months….

We decided we would buy a coop vs. building our own….

I’d been thinking about punny names….

I found a friend who would take a rooster, if we got one….

Now, all we had to do was make it happen.

Ever since we moved into this old farmhouse, I had been planting the seed inside Andrew’s head that we should get chickens.  It would be great, right?  We’d get eggs; they would jumpstart our compost pile; everyone would have hours of entertainment.

We started looking around for chicken coops and found one we liked at Tractor Supply: the Sentinel.  Because when we are bringing home baby chicks, they need the crème de la crème of chicken coops.  That’s about as far as we got with our research.  We hadn’t thought much about it after that.

Fast forward to Saturday morning.

Andrew has been cooped up in this house far too long.  (See what I did there!)  With COVID restrictions at his work, he’s been working from home non-stop since March.  By the time the weekend comes, he’s ready to be anywhere but inside this house.

I heard through the grapevine that morning that he wanted to get out of the house.  There were mumblings of walking around a couple of stores.  I declined the offer to wander around a random store.  That sounds zero percent appealing to me, but then the idea hit me.

“If you want to go look at chicken coops,” I told him, “I’ll go with you.”

He agreed but made one thing clear: this would be my project.

After a few phone calls, we discovered the only Tractor Supply that had the coop we wanted was about 30 minutes away.  There was only one coop left.  

We piled into the truck and found ourselves at Tractor Supply.  After a few minutes of aimless wandering, we found the coop.  The helpful salesman loaded us up with the other supplies we would need: feed, bedding, wire, a heat lamp, and of course, the chickens!

 

We chose to get Isa Brown chickens because those were the only sexed chickens in the store.  The lovely salesman promised me I was taking home 6 females, but I’m pretty skeptical that all of them will be females.  Only time will tell…

We brought them home and set up a little spot for them in the sunroom.  They have been chirping away ever since.  I’m still doing my research on this specific breed to learn more about what they need and how to best take care of them.

Now remember, I have ZERO experience with any of gardening or farm life.  I definitely don’t have experience with bringing home baby chicks.

But I’m learning, and they are still alive.  What a day!