They are hungry birds.

Here's the timeline.

• Wednesday - Twenty six chicks were hatched and put in the mail.
• Thursday morning - We pick up the chicks at the post office at ~10:30 AM.
• Thursday night - We give 4 chicks to a neighbor.
• Sunday - Another friend picks up 6 chicks leaving us with 16.
• Tuesday - We are nearly out of food.  They finished off a 5 lbs. bag of chick feed in less than a week.
• Wednesday - Time to get more food.

I haven't raised chicks before, so I don't know if it's normal for them to go though 5 lbs of food in a week or not.  I have seen them a the feeder a lot.  I even caught one sleeping with its head in there. 

It was only a day or two before they started getting wing feathers.  Supposedly you can tell the sex by the feathers, but I'm not sure how.  I'm just going to take my chances and hope I don't end up with all roosters.

We had one chick that was kind of gimpy.  It looked like it had a leg problem.  But, it must have gone away because all of the birds are walking around just fine.  Some of them actually fly from one side of the cage to the other.

They make a mess of their water.  It has to be changed several times a day.  I mentioned how much they are eating, so obviously I have to fill the feeder several times a day too.

I don't have a picture, but I had to move the heat lamp higher.  I noticed that some of the birds were panting and keeping their wings out to stay cool.  It is 82* in the garage.  I'm guessing they don't need much supplemental heat.  I took the 100w bulb out and put in a 40w so they'd be able to see.  No need to keep them in the dark like the industrial chicken houses do.

We picked up 50 lbs of food today.  This is 20% protein.  I'll be interesting to see how long it lasts.  Cost was $20.82.