Chicks in Crisis

We had our first crisis with the chicks. I had a 5 pound bag of feed that I purchased from the hatchery that was soon to run out. I tried the feed mill on Saturday afternoon and missed them by 20 minutes. I thought I could make the feed stretch until Tuesday, but with the miracle grow chickens, it didn't last much until Monday morning. They were getting desperate. I found a box of Kashi 7 grain cereal that had some of the good grains that chicks need. So I put some through the food processor and added some grit and the babies seemed to like it.
So off to Tractor Supply Company to look at equipment. While we were there we discovered they sell chick feed, but ALAS they were out of the starter feed. We ended up driving into Harrisburg and getting a bag at the new TSC....just in the nick of time, they were getting ready to close. The babies are fed and happily sleeping in the brooder. They just keep growing and growing....much faster than I anticipated.
Settlement is tomorrow and we are off to clean up the new place and get ready to move our stuff in on Wednesday. The coop is really dirty right now and we will need to get that place scrubbed down good to make sure the babies don't get any bad diseases. More to come....

Smarter than your average chicks

Day 4 with the chicks. They are growing so fast, I can't believe it. They can reach their heads over the side of the brooder (when the lid is off) and some can even jump onto the side. Thank goodness it has rounded edges....they usually fall back into the box.

The chicks are smart. They try to find the highest ground to either look out or try to escape. My guess is the escape route....because, let's be honest who wants to live in a little box with that many competitors. Chicks are busybodies and they are very inconsiderate of one another. When one goes to do something, the rest follow. So there is a frenzy when I refill the water feeder or the food. They make such a mess with the waterer that I resorted to filling the basin part with marbles to try and keep the pine chips and poop out. I also inverted my second waterer basin and propped the filled on on top. The chicks can still get to the water, but it appears to be working to keep the water clean.

I have gotten into the groove of taking care of them. I have been sleeping more easily now that I know that the babies are fine through the night. I think we are going to outgrow the brooder faster than I originally thought. I hope to get it to work until the move. Then, we can set something larger up in the chicken coop at the farm.

I can't believe we will be in there in less than a week. Time has flown by pretty quickly.

I am off to make some pizza for the missionaries.

Doesn't everyone keep their baby chicks under the bed?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS ISN'T
THE AUDITION FOR HAPPY FEET 2 ????

Our chicks made it through the night. I didn't sleep soundly and found myself waking up quite often. I probably would have slept on the couch next to them but I like my bed too much. Since I normally wake at 4:30 am for seminary, I was up and came to check on them. They were all laying around the floor of the brooder sleeping quietly. I went back to bed for another hour or so. I feel like a new mom!

I read that chickens like classical music. I have been playing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for these chickens. They seem to like it and are quite content. I am thinking about a surround sound system for the chicken coop so they can listen all day long. Maybe I will call my brood the Daughters of Ishmael.

So, today I took my sister, Gina, in for an appointment at Hershey Medical Center. On the way there we got to talking about the chicks. She wanted to know if I keep the chickens under the bed. What! Under the bed???? She said, "You keep them in an under-the-bed box, don't you." Well, technically our brooder is, in it's simplest form, just that....but we don't keep them under the bed. (They are happy in the corner of the family room, up on a table.) It was a priceless moment and very deserving of a blog notation.

The chicks seem bigger to me today. They did eat and drink a lot yesterday. Maybe they just fluffed out and seem that way. I can definitely see their wing feathers better. I was out researching chick breeds on the McMurray Hatchery website. It seems that our little exotic (who we named Jack Sparrow) is a Silver Duckwing Old English game bird. I think it is a "he" rather than a "she" so we will have to wait and see how it goes with the old pecking order.

Jack Sparrow

I have two babies with pasty bottoms. It could be from stress, but they seem ok otherwise. This happens to some chicks with the stress of shipping. I just think they might have dribbled some poo on their behinds and then everything else sticks to it. I have been keeping the vents clean to make sure we don't get a backup. This is the grosser side of chicken keeping, but I have wiped quite a few poopy behinds in my day....LOL.

I am off to go watch the babies now. TTFN.

The Loudest Mail I Ever Received

The chicks arrived today. I went up to the Post Office as soon as they opened to see if they were there. The hatchery says they deliver the chicks between Sunday and Tuesday and they hold them at the Post Office. Our town is very small and anyone who lives within 1 mile of the Post Office has to pick up their mail. It is nice because everyone in the PO knows you by name (or in my case Box Number, since Mastracola is a little too exotic for a town in the sticks.) So when I came in today and said, "I have some chicks." Scott said, "Yes, yes you do." I could hear them chirping happily away in the back room. It seems the chicks arrived last night and the employees were probably happy to see them go.

The box was so much smaller than I expected. I think a bucket of KFC is larger than what they shipped my 26 chicks in. My feeder and waterers arrived the same time, so I needed to get everything set up for them when I got home. The book says you need to dip each chicks in the water so they know where to go for it. Well, after the first 3 chicks it was a free-for-all! The chicks were running through it and jumping on one another. It was pure chaos. I got all 26 transferred in and my hope is that they are smart enough to follow the ones who do know where the water is located and that not too many decide to bathe in the water. Wet, cold chicks are not happy.

I have learned that (just like human babies) chicks let you know how they are feeling by how loudly they are chirping. When I got the box at the PO they were squawking like crazy. Once I set them down in my warm car, they went almost silent. I haven't really gotten back to that almost silent zone yet, but I guess like my human babies, I could always load the brooder in the car and drive around the block a couple of times.

I have the feeder loaded up now and I am surprised at their instincts at one day old. They are pecking away and drinking their water. I can see that I am going to have to make a trip to Costco for a case or two of paper towels! I read that you shouldn't put the babies on newspaper because it is too slippery and can make their feet get splayed. Bounty seems to give them enough traction...but they are poop factories and will need to have it changed pretty often.

As I write this, they seem to be quieting down. Enzo has quieted down too. My Maltese thinks he is part herder (you should see him herd our Yorkie to go outside) and he is quite interested in the chicks and has tried to work his way up to the table where the brooder is located. It will be fun to see him around the barnyard!

More fun to come later.

You have to start somewhere

Well, Nick finally talked me into it. I have a blog. I thought that our experiences on the farm would be a great topic to blog about. We make settlement on the place in just under two weeks, but there is so much we are already working on to prepare for our new lifestyle. I ordered 25 chickens, (well, actually 26 because they are sending me a free exotic chicken). I really only wanted 5 hens and maybe a rooster, but the mail order company has a minimum of 25. So I selected 4 each of about 6 different breeds to start and 1 rooster to complement my brood. I probably will end up with at least 3 roosters because one of my breeds is a straight-run (which in chicken terms means about a 50/50 mix of sexes). I ordered sex-link hens for all the others. I have been studying all things chicken for about 4 months now in preparation. We really wanted some good brown egg layers and chickens with a good temperment. The really fun part will be waiting to see what the chickens grow into, especially our oddball exotic bird....I guess the one who cackles in a foreign accent around the barnyard will give it away. Just kidding!

Our one-day old chicks arrive sometime between Sunday and Tuesday (May 20-22). From what I can gather, the chicks arrive at the post office and you get a call to come get them. It almost seems like adopting a baby, sitting around waiting for the call. We built our chicken brooder this week out of a large under-the-bed storage container that we cut parts of the lid out and bolted in some screening. I ordered the chick feeder and waterers the other night and I hope they arrive before the chickens! The chicks are hatched and sent....so they will be very thirsty when they get here. They are coming from Iowa.

I told Bob that if 26 chickens is too much we will just have to cull the flock and have some nice chicken dinners. He freaked out when I suggested it. He said that he never signed on to eat our barnyard friends. Someone else told me that if we are planning on eating them not to give them any names....but that advice came too late. I already had names selected before I purchased the hens. I thought it would be a fun idea (when I was only buying 4-5 chickens) to name them after my maternal aunts. Addie, Rosie, Patty, and Dianne. The 5th chicken was going to be named Bea or Gladys or Gertrude....cause they just sound like chicken names. The rooster is going to be named Sonny, after Aunt Rose's husband. Now that we are going to have 26, we will have to work on some additional names. Feel free to submit some ideas!

Can't wait to post some photos of our new babies.