Baby Chick Portraits by Huntsville Family Photographer, Kristen Lynne Photography

My husband and I have been wanting chickens for years and we are finally able to start this new little venture. It started back when we were living in Virginia and only had enough land (and local regulations) to support 5 chickens. We were so close to building a brand new coop when we got the news that we’d likely be moving to Alabama so all of our backyard chicken plans were put on hold. Now that we are in Alabama and have 4.5 acres we decided maybe we’d get 10 chickens, after all we have a 12’x24′ shed that has been converted to a coop so there is plenty of room. But when the time came to place our order, we discovered the hatchery had required minimums (a min. of 2-5 chicks per breed and a total min. of 15 per order). We ended up purchasing 20 day-old chicks and the hatchery threw in 5 extra, so we currently have 25 little chirping babies in a brooder in our laundry room. I guess this is what they call, “chicken math.” Ha!

We really want a colorful egg basket as well as a diverse flock… because it seems like more fun and also, why not?! We aren’t 100% certain on what breeds we have (we let the hatcher choose some for us) so we have to wait until they’re full grown to know for sure. But here are the breeds that we think we have, from left to right: Blue Ameraucana, Easter Egger, Plymouth Barred Rock, White or Splash Ameraucana, French Copper Maran, White Leghorn, Red Sex Link.

This sweet girl (?) is one of the bonus chicks the hatchery threw into our order and she’s the only pale yellow chick in the bunch. She’s a little bigger than everyone else and so sticks out like a sore thumb, but gosh it’s so adorable! She is also the friendliest and willingly hops into our hands and falls asleep.

Here she is standing next to one of our French Copper Marans. We haven’t officially assigned anyone names, but we’ve found ourselves coming up with nicknames in order to identify certain ones. We’ve been calling the yellow one, “Big Bird” or “Yellow” and the Maran in the photo has been dubbed, “Blue” because she had a teeny toe injury that required a touch of blue-kote (an antiseptic spray dyed deep blue). I guess we have a lot more names to come up with! Here are more photos of the new flock.