As you know, we usually receive three or so batches of chicks over the summer months. Most of these are meat birds, but we have others in there, this year, as well. This last week we received our final shipment for the summer. We also ended up with some surprise babies from one of our friends in town. I’ll explain and share some photos below.

The meat birds that Sue’s been getting, those that our clients seem to like the best, are Cornish Cross. The Cornish Cross is developed by crossing the commercial Cornish chicken with a White Rock chicken. They grow quickly and we’re able to process them at 6 -7 weeks. They make great roasting chickens and are fairly easy to raise… save that they are susceptible to heat exhaustion during the high summer temps. This summer, with each batch of Cornish Cross, Sue has also added 5 Buff Minorcas, just to keep our new layer numbers up. Minorcas are the largest, and heaviest, of the Mediterranean poultry breeds — mature males can reach 9 pounds and females average about 7.5 pounds. This breed is excellent in free range settings and warmer climates. In this photo, the Cornish cross are the light yellow chicks and the Buff Minorcas are the darker, buff colored chicks. They are always cute and fuzzy. Don’t get attached, though, OK?

Our surprise babies this week were a couple of quails. Our friend, George, who lives in Sierra Vista proper, gave a call on Tuesday. He had noticed a couple of very young, very small quail on his doorstep on Monday. By Tuesday evening they were still huddled there with no sign of parents or siblings around. One of his neighbors believes that a menacing neighborhood cat may have eaten the rest of the family, leaving these two orphaned. They were quite young. One of them was still having difficulty walking without falling over. George was very concerned about them, so Sue and I agreed to come and collect them. They are much like chickens in that they need a high protein food and water all the time, they need to be kept at 90° for a week or so, and they need time to grow. To give you a bit of perspective, the container you see there with food in it, it’s a lid the size of a lid from like a spaghetti sauce jar. You can easily hold both of them in one palm.We did contact the wildlife rescue in Tucson, but they haven’t gotten back to us yet. If they do, I may deliver them  to people more knowledgeable about these babies on Friday when I head up there for other purposes.

As you can see, we’re just lousy with babies right now. The littles that were moved over to the Goat Boys’ coop are living their best life! They have mama to keep them safe and a whole goat pen to roam around in. They are definitely the bravest of the flock. As we go along with these young ‘uns, we’ll keep you up to date. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!