Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Peeps
Yes, I have been a daily chicken bum, but between my Dad coming to visit and the arrival of your future egg layers I have been somewhat busy.
Chicks hatched Monday and were shipped immediately to us from New Mexico. I picked them up Wednesday morning 6:00 am at the local post office. They show up in boxes a foot and a half by two foot, 100 to a box, 25 chicks in four compartments. We received 350 chicks total, of which 100 are Red broilers (meat birds), 100 Rhode Island Reds, 50 Ameraucanas, 25 White Leghorns, 25 Delawares, and 50 Penedensecas. Of the 100 meat birds, 15 arrived dead. There must have been problems with the shipping, because all of the dead ones were from one compartment of one box. No fun to be counting dead chicks at 6 AM, but the important part was to get the rest settled in.
When you take chicks out of the shipping box, you dip their beak in water to remind them that they can drink, since they have spent the last 2 days in transit with no food and no water. So after dipping the 335 birds and setting them down under the heat lamps, filling up their waterers, filling up their feeders, spreading shavings down for bedding we sat back and watched the chicks warm up and settle in. Katie calls it livestock TV, because it is mesmerizing and you could just sit there and watch them for hours.
Since Wednesday, we have had a few more deaths, mostly meat birds. I suspect that it's the survivors from the death compartment in that one box, who made the trip but were badly weakened and are now slowly dying off. Here is a picture of our chick brooder set up in one of the stalls in the barn.
Chicks hatched Monday and were shipped immediately to us from New Mexico. I picked them up Wednesday morning 6:00 am at the local post office. They show up in boxes a foot and a half by two foot, 100 to a box, 25 chicks in four compartments. We received 350 chicks total, of which 100 are Red broilers (meat birds), 100 Rhode Island Reds, 50 Ameraucanas, 25 White Leghorns, 25 Delawares, and 50 Penedensecas. Of the 100 meat birds, 15 arrived dead. There must have been problems with the shipping, because all of the dead ones were from one compartment of one box. No fun to be counting dead chicks at 6 AM, but the important part was to get the rest settled in.
When you take chicks out of the shipping box, you dip their beak in water to remind them that they can drink, since they have spent the last 2 days in transit with no food and no water. So after dipping the 335 birds and setting them down under the heat lamps, filling up their waterers, filling up their feeders, spreading shavings down for bedding we sat back and watched the chicks warm up and settle in. Katie calls it livestock TV, because it is mesmerizing and you could just sit there and watch them for hours.
Since Wednesday, we have had a few more deaths, mostly meat birds. I suspect that it's the survivors from the death compartment in that one box, who made the trip but were badly weakened and are now slowly dying off. Here is a picture of our chick brooder set up in one of the stalls in the barn.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
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