Preserve an Endangered Species with Heritage Chickens

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RHODE ISLAND RED (ORIGINAL STRAIN): A good forager, and some are excellent mothers, though setting instinct has been largely bred out of modern strains. 7 pounds.

WYADOTTES (WHITE): Plump layers of abundant brown eggs. Cockerels flesh out quickly. Makes a marvelous dual-purpose chicken. 6 pounds.

Moderately Endangered Production Breeds

ORPINGTONS: White and Buff (golden) are large bodied with white skin and plump, juicy flesh. Brown eggs. Heavy, to 8 pounds. Fine brooders and mothers.

SPECKLED SUSSEX: Excellent forager and brooder, so especially suitable for a home flock. Medium-heavy at 6 pounds, efficient feed converter of light brown eggs. Spectacular mahogany body with dark tail, white-tipped feathers. Perfect for a small family. Good show birds. (And the next breed we plan to try. Only about $5 more a batch of 25 than more common varieties.)

Have your brooder, feeder, and water hooked up and operating so the chicks can warm up and take a long drink as soon as you get them home. You can buy fancy brooders, and an enclosed unit is necessary for year-round outdoor use.

I keep chicks in the kitchen for their first few days and on the porch for the first week, brooding them under an ordinary tin-domed clamp light from the hardware store with a low-watt infrared heat lamp (not an ultraviolet suntan lamp—that will cook the chicks).

The lamp is suspended on a pulley from the overhead above a table with a big cardboard box on it with several layers of newspaper in the bottom. More conventional is to surround the warm spot on the table under the lamp with a barrier made from a strip of 6-inch-wide cardboard or aluminum flashing formed in a yard-diameter circle.

The lamp is first lowered to some 6 inches above the table to warm the surface. I scatter a little mash and fine sand under the perimeter of the circle the light makes on the table and put in two simple water fonts made of a saucer holding an upside-down plastic butter tub with a small notch cut in the rim. I fill the tub with warm water, put the saucer on top, and flip it. Water burbles out to fill the saucer but is kept from flowing all over by vacuum. A half brick on top keeps the chicks from jumping up and dislodging the tub and tracking in the water.

Chicks are shipped in a cardboard box with raffia flooring and air holes punched around the sides. When hatched they have a built-in 3-day supply of food and water and are not bothered by moderate heat variations. Let the box rest a bit and listen. A steady chorus of quiet chirps means contented chicks. Alarmed and rapid "cheep-cheep-cheep" means stressed birds. Either way, get them to the brooder directly.

Put them in one at a time, removing any pieces of raffia or dropping from feet or fuzz.

Then (especially if these are your first chicks) get ready for entertainment. They are fascinating to watch as they mill around, peck at grit and feed, grab a beakful of water and tip up their heads to drink it down, and then seem to collapse and fall asleep in an instant. The neighbors will all want to see, and the kids will want you to bring them to school for show-andtell. If you change the paper often, they even smell warm and fragrant for the first week or two.

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