When I got into chicken keeping I read all the chicken books, stayed up every night on the internet, researching, planning, I even laid in bed thinking of what my coop would look like. I shoved every piece of valuable chicken information that I could find into my head, feather patterns, shank color, rose comb, AHH it was overwhelming but one thing stuck I WANTED BLUE LACED RED WYANDOTTES. Now I get excited about things and tend to jump the gun. Tractor supply only had chicks for a few days when I decided I was ready (I was NOT ready, I didn't even have a coop!) for chicks. I was up at the church where my mother-n-law works and a man named Bobby works there also. Bobby has chickens. So naturally I love Bobby and want to talk to Bobby because he wants to talk about chickens and no one else I know does. He told me about the chicks at tractor supply and told me about brooder lights and so on. I decided I would go "look" at the chicks. Don't look at the chicks. You can never just look at the chicks. I left there with 10 chicks that day (3 cuckoo marans, 3 buff orpingtons and 4 random pullets) and 6 ducks...........I NEVER EVEN WANTED DUCKS!! I had never thought about ducks......I actually made it all the way to the check out counter with just the chickens and then told the clerk to go ahead and ring up 6 ducks. Either way I was the proud new owner of 16 birds, a heat lamp, some chick food and pine shavings. Baby chicks and ducks are tiny, there is no reason I can't house these babies in my daughters room for 6 weeks. Right? My coop would be done in 6 weeks and they would have a home. LOL..... I used a old metal cabinet turned over on it's back, like a big metal box. I clipped the heat lamp to the side pointing down, added their food bowl and waterer. I moved all my daughters furniture to one side of the room, oh my gosh she was so excited, she held the babies, she loved the babies. Life was good, we were farmers. I loved them and she loved them. Madison (my daughter) was more responsible than ever with her new chicks. I woke up one morning and she had already changed their water and was cleaning out their box, I didn't even have to ask! Then it happened, overnight, they went from cute fuzzy butts to nasty, nasty, NASTY. Now I just assumed that they were all nasty (chickens and ducks) I have never raised either one and really didn't know anything. I had to remove ALL the pine shavings EVERYDAY, the whole box would be smelly and full of poopy, sludgy, waterery pine shavings. Every time I gave them new water they dumped it out. Chicks fly sooner than you think and ducks grow faster than you think. I went to check on them one day and there is POOP. EVERYWHERE. In my daughters room.......POOP. EVERYWHERE. One chicken, one super pooper chicken decided she could fly and did......all over....everywhere......for the whole night. So I decided they had to be separated, the ducks where too big and the chicks could fly. I needed a taller home for the chicks so I bought a stock tank at the co-op and put it in my daughters room beside the duck container. Now by this point I was ready for them to go outside but it was still below freezing at night and it was not a option, the coop wasn't done and there was no where else for the time being. I then learned that chickens are not nasty, they are dusty.......they make dust and they bath in it and they throw it up into the air and it lands everywhere. Ducks are nasty and smelly, chickens are dusty. So now I have nasty smelly ducks, dusty flying pooping chickens, all in my daughters room. I'm just waiting on child services to show up at this point. And that was just the first 3 weeks. Check back in later for "The rest of the story". Goodnight ya'll
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