This has been our chick's home all week.  (The fencing on top is to keep out the cats, who were very interested in their new housemate.)  I've kept the chick in the house mostly because a lone chicken is a lonely chicken, and I wanted to be able to talk to it and keep it company.  The chick and I have really started to bond, which is a bad thing since I don't know whether it's a girl (and will stay in our flock for a couple of years) or a boy (and will grace our table this fall.)

Meanwhile, I started doing the math and realized we might not have enough eggs this winter if I didn't act fast.  Most chickens start laying when they're six months old, but if they reach the critical age late enough in the year when the light is beginning to fade, the hens will hold off until the spring.  We barely had enough eggs this winter with our current, aging flock, and we definitely need more layers for the winter.  So I decided to take a gamble and buy some local Black Australorp chicks to keep our homegrown chick company and give us some definite eggs this fall.

Why is it a gamble?  After perusing Craigslist across a four state area, the chicks closest to our homegrown chick in age were two days younger.  That sounds like nothing to us, but chickens mature so fast that two days of chickhood is closer to two years of human infancy.  And chickens are mean, picking on smaller and weaker flockmates relentlessly.  There's a chance that our older chick will beat up the new chicks and we'll have to separate them.

We moved our homegrown chick to a fenced off part of the chicken coop Thursday evening, introducing sixteen youngsters at the same time.  The newcomers were a bit chilled from their journey and immediately crawled under their Ecoglow brooder to take a nap, while our homegrown chick went crazy exploring his new habitat.  After a while, a particularly perky Australorp came out to join him, and our chick did peck at the youngster a bit, but not so much that the two couldn't eat at the same food dish.

It's too soon to be sure that the newcomers will get along with their older "sibling", and I'll check on the flock several times today to make sure there's no bullying going on.  If all goes well, we'll raise the chicks together until they're old enough to easily sex, then will give our friends five of the pullets to expand their flock.  The cockerels will go in our bellies, and we'll keep a couple of hens to try out this heirloom variety in our pasture.