Their HERE!!!!

Well it was an exciting week here at the Groom camp. The grandparents were in from Boston and we added a few members to the family. All in on week, we managed to get our worms for our worm bin and picked up two nine week old red sex link chickens.

We Will Start With The Worms...

I made my poor husband stop by the bait shop on his way home from work and pick up the worms with strict instructions to get a LOT of Red Worms. I was thinking about a half pound of worms. Well the bait store it turns out only sells them in small little cups packed with worms.

He picked up about 12 containers. So in the worms went. I tried to shake of any big clumps of the other stuff in the cup, which looked like coffee grinds but smelled like dirt. I saved it for the garden! So I pulled back the bedding and in they went.

I then covered them back over with bedding and gave it a good spray of water.

****This all happened a few days ago and since then we have hit a bump in the road...FRUIT FLIES!!!!! Now this is a very common problem with worm bins and one of the main causes is not enough top bedding. Something we are defiantly guilty of. So more cardboard was added and a good old fashioned fruit fly trap was also added. We now seem to have a happy healthy worm bin.


Now For The Chickens...

We picked up our two nine week old chickens from a family I found on Craigslist, oh what you can find on Craigslist but that is a whole other post. So Ruby and Marge joined the family.



Sex link chickens are cross-bred chickens whose color at hatching is differentiated by sex, thus making chick sexing an easier process. This helps if you know you don't want a rooster.

Red sex-links are a cross between a Rhode Island Red or New Hampshire rooster and a White Rock, Silver Laced Wyandotte, Rhode Island White or Delaware hen. They are often very good layers, don't mind confinement and typically very friendly. Their are many different breeds to choose from, here is a good place to get basic breed info; Henderson's Chicken Breed Chart.

This is Ruby.


and here is Marge


Both are doing well and seem to love their new coop. We are putting up netting around the fence so they can free range for plants and hopefully lots of bugs. I will be back later this week with a full chicken and coop post, until then you can get tons of info from my favorite chicken site; Backyard Chickens.