not bees, but they eat bees

*NOTE* Kevin thinks that a post about chickens doesn't belong on a bee blog. But I'm not making a separate chicken blog, that's crazy.

In January we ordered our chicks from the internet. And then they came express mail a couple of weeks ago. Yes, in a box. Chicks-in-a-box. Not to be confused with this.

That morning I had a conference to work at and I had planned out my day just-so, when my cell phone rang. It was the postmaster, and the chicks had been in transit an extra day(!)

I drove over at 7am and they handed the peeping box to me.

Expecting certain chick death, I was surprised to see all 5 chicks were alive, see below.

Unfortunately, two chicks met their doom in the following days, despite our best efforts. RIP Lemon Chicken and Rosemary Chicken.

I took Lemon to the vet (like an idiot) thinking that they would say "just do this simple thing" or "sorry, she's a gonner." But they fully diagnosed stress-induced dehydration and kidney failure. Sheesh, it's just a 4 dollar chick, people. No need for all that, it's not a horse. They were disappointed that I didn't agree to an overnight fluid IV treatment for $200.00. (Sockswithsandalsland is filled with animal-kooks!)

The surviving three chicks are, in order of size: General [Tsao's] Chicken, Funky Chicken and Butter Chicken. Butter Chicken is the people's chick-of-choice.

Kid R with Funky Chicken.

I'm also somewhat surprised no chickens have been mortally injured by our kids (less we forget the Accidental Butterfly Massacre of 2010, woe!)

In this little 4H-suburban-edition experiment, I've noticed that the chicks are much like other babies: they eat, sleep, poop and cry. They get big fast and they make a mess.

Kevin fed them a worm yesterday and this morning and scrappy little Butter won the prize every time. Hooray for the underdog.

We have their little barn-coop waiting for them to get big enough to move uptown. Right now they have a studio [cardboard] apartment in our dining room, complete with heat lamps and roosting stick.

Here's the barn, mid-way through the build (I'm too lazy to get up and go out back in the rain and take a pic of the finished coop).

It now has an egg-door up top in the "hayloft" and a roof, etc.

When they move in, I'll have a roost-warming blog post and show it off...