6 little chicks

I promised to tell you about the Easter chicks but I this week has been sort of unusual in that 2 nights this week I have had to work til almost midnight and on top of that we were without power for a day and a half because of a freak wind storm that had trees down on power lines all over the city. Today should be a lighter day but I am at work and really shouldn't be doing this here. However, I just had to post this photo that my brother sent me last night.

Here is Emerson (his dog) with Penny. My brother is the one who came from B'ham to Atlanta to get these chickens and apparently they are adapting real well to their new home. Little Penny looks like she's setting things straight with Emerson - "I'm here to lay eggs NOT to eat you hear? Give me time - by autumn I'll be laying some nice eggs for you and your master". I think they established a friendship that night.

Here's are a few from a little photo shoot we did that night.

The whole gang. The little black chicks still don't have names. Any ideas?

Mom probably would have been horrified had she seen us photographing these chicks on her dining room table.

This is the photogenic Daisy. Taylor named her first. She's light yellow right now but will grow into a pure white chicken.

continuation...
The event that had my brother egg-cited was the so-called Chicken Stimulus Package organized by a backyard poultry advocate who calls himself the Chicken Whisperer. 650 chicks were given away that day. The Chicken Whisperer was there to promote raising urban chickens as pets and for their eggs, and to raise awareness for a fella who was in hot water with the city of Roswell for having backyard chickens. I feel certain the city will have to re-write the laws to allow backyard poultry or they'll really have their hands full! :-) He's the man who had this bumper sticker on his truck.


I just went a long for the ride that morning. They were to begin giving chicks away at 8am on Saturday so we thought we had to get there real early to be sure we were in line to receive our allotted 2. We got there at 7 and no one was anywhere to be seen. Gradually people started showing up, but still not anything like the crowd we had anticipated.

It was interesting to me to see the different types of people there to get chicks. There were old and young couples, families with little children, country folk and city folk. They brought everything from fancy baskets, shoe boxes, to plastic strawberries cartons to carry their chicks home in.


I met a really nice photo journalist that morning. One of the highlights of my morning. She was a young girl who graduated from UGA (where my daughter attends) and has been working for the AJC for 4 years. She was very friendly and we had time to talk before they started bringing in the chicks. Of course then she had to do her job. I was surprised the next morning when I saw her photos in the paper and there was one so similar to a photo I took that my mom thought it was mine. I guess we both saw the story here - a young girl who was handing out the chicks with a I love "chickens" button on her hoodie and a heart ring on her hand.


It turned out that my brother got 4 chicks and my dad got 2. We took them home and put a heat lamp on them. The next morning there was a bad storm in Atlanta and my dad's house was one that lost power at 9am. His main concern all day and into the next day was how to keep the chicks warm. So he lit a coleman lantern and put foil over it to direct the heat to the chicks and then stayed up most of the night making sure they were ok. The power was out for over 30 hours but the chicks survived. I hope the others that got chicks that day, and were without power, were able to keep their little girls alive as well.

With these 6 chickens (my dad decided to give his 2 to him), my brother should be getting close to 2 dozen eggs per week. He'll have some very happy neighbors. There's no comparison between a store bought and farm fresh egg. One could compare this to a vine fresh tomato versus a hot house tomato from the store.