Chicks

An exciting day today as we welcomed our first chicks!

One of my colleagues gave me the phone number of a little farm where she buys her chicks. I went to pick up 6 black Marans today at their lovely little farm about 10 minutes from our house. I actually came home with three 8-day-old black Marans, three 13-day-old Coucou de Malines (related to Marans) and two 13-day-old Light Sussex. That, you will notice if you were paying attention, adds up to 8 birds. Oops.
I did ask for only two of each but he added two extras for free and I was too soft to reject them :)

This is one of the three "coucou de malines". Which I think is a type of Maran. They are beautiful grey speckled hens which are really bred as table birds but are so beautiful I couldn't resist.

The boys have been so gentle!

Here's one of the younger black Marans. They are a lot smaller and fluffier- I think we are going to be surprised by how quickly they grow. These lay dark chocolate brown eggs. They seem much more fragile than the others but I'm hoping it's just because of the age difference and they aren't actually weaker in any way. Brendan is particularly besotted by these wee ones, I think because the bigger ones can already flap their wing feathers a bit and these littlies are bit more timid.

And here's Tadhg with one Sussex and a Maran.

So maybe we'll have a regular chicken diary entry on here. I'm off to sit with them for a bit before going to bed. They're not the cutest little things but they really are funny and totally tug on your heart strings.