New Arrivals

Spring is such a wonderful season. There is so much new life everywhere. This week, we had 72 newcomers arrive at Hill Giant Farm. 51 of them were Rhode Island Red chicks, and 21 of them were Peking ducklings. They're awfully cute, and very noisy. Both the chicks and the ducklings are living in storage buckets in the grainery of the barn under heat lamps. This morning when we came out, there were a number of chicks that had smothered one another in the corner. Unfortunately,  some of them died. The others were put in a bin of their own with the heat lamp, and they have made a full recovery. As a last ditch attempt to help them warm up, R put them in "intensive care", which amounted to using the blow dryer in the house to warm them up and dry them off.

Below are some photos of the chicks and ducklings. We hope you enjoy them. If you live nearby, feel free to pop in and visit.

R holding one of the chicks. At this point, gender cannot easily be determined. It won't be until they get their adult feathers that it will be clear who are hens and roosters.

Our friend C doing his best to keep this squirmy little guy from  getting away.

There's nothing like standing on your food to kick start the day. 

This photo of M with both a duckling and a chick highlights the difference in size between the two birds.

 Tomorrow the ducklings will begin their supervised swimming. We'll try and add some photos of that too. Enjoy your day!