Welcome

Red Bucket Farm is an urban farm on a quarter acre property in an average residential neighborhood. We are located in Wisconsin, USDA Zone 5. We focus on chickens, bees, orchard fruit, and raised garden beds for fruits and veggies. We hope to reduce our footprint on the planet by growing some of our food, reducing our use of fossil fuels, and gardening with sustainable practices. Thanks for visiting!

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Introducing Spring Chicks

We picked up our chicks at Abendroth's Hatchery on Monday morning. The hatchery was clean, friendly and well organized. Our girls were carefully packaged and ready to go when we arrived.

In previous years, we've gotten our chicks delivered by US Postal, so the "day old" chicks were really three days old upon arrival. Now that we've experienced true day-old chicks, we can clearly see a difference in size. What a difference a day makes in the life of something so small and fragile!

And now, without further ado, here they are:


This is Little Mittens, an Easter Egger. She will grow golden brown plumage and lay green eggs. Her name is a long-standing family joke. We haven't allowed Kavi to name any of the animals around here until today....for obvious reasons. He says he's going to get a mastiff or an Angus bull and name it Little Mittens, which he pronounces Wittle Mittens in a very high voice.


Pictured above is Queen Latifah, a Black Australorp. She will grow into a beautiful bird with shiny, soft black feathers, black legs and black beak. Right now she has a little white diaper butt. She will lay light brown eggs.


This one is Marilyn, a Silver Laced Wyandotte. She'll grow silvery white plumage with black edges outlining most of her feathers. We expect her to be the glamour girl of the flock, with her curvy body shape and fancy dress. She'll lay light brown eggs.


These three are Ping, Pang and Pong. They are White Plymouth Rock, an excellent dual purpose breed. Their names come from Puccini's opera Turandot. Yeah, you knew I couldn't stay out of the naming process entirely. But I tried!

1 comment:

  1. I just found your site through a link from the cluck chicken store and it's great! And how did I not know about this nearby hatchery! Our first batch of chicks was from Sunnyside in Beaver Dam (just sexlink birds) and we currently have a mixed set of barred rock, buff orpington, and a couple of muttlies from Craigslist. I never realized how handy it would be to have different colored egg-layers, it's so much easier to keep track of who's producing and when.

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