Spring Has Sprung
Nothing says Spring like chicks!
They ship in a fancy shoebox.
We got the call from the Post Office at 6 am the other day and Mr. Fix-It rolled out to pick up our little box of peeps.
Of course we had to peek in at them first thing.
Normally I enjoy hustling the kids out the door 40 minutes early so that we can ride to pick them up before I drop them off at school. But we’ve been letting them sleep in a bit lately since everyone’s been sick on and off and on and off again already this year. So Mr. Fix-It had the honor of bringing them home while we were having breakfast.
So we left them in their box, in our master bathtub, until I came home at lunchtime.
(What? You’ve never come home to peeps in your bathtub? You don’t know what you’re missing!)
Our red heat lamp bulb makes everything look sort of strange.
Usually I pick them up, drop the kids at school, and then “sneak” the box into my office for a few hours until I can take them home at lunch. Then I put fresh food and water in their brooder house and take them out of their shipping box one by one. I dip their little beaks in the water and make sure they’re each drinking. After a drink or two, they really perk up and start shuffling around and find the food pretty fast.
Those little fluff balls move FAST. It's hard to get clear pictures.
These are all egg laying hens to replace our losses from last year in the henhouse. Between our predator problem and Hurricane Irene, we lost more than half our flock last fall!
This time we’re trying a couple new heritage breeds, New Hampshire Reds and Black Australorps to go along with our Lakenvelder and Buff Orpington hens from the last couple years. We’re not breeding our own chicks right now because I don’t have the time (or patience!) to be raising roosters at this point. There are a lot of hatcheries that supply heritage breed chicks though, so it hasn’t been a problem.
Hopefully this year goes better!
More from my site
How to Find and Use a Farm Sitter to Enjoy Vacation as a Homesteader
Putting the Summer Cover on the Chicken Hoop House
How to Steam Farm Fresh Eggs for Easy Peeling
How to Help Needy Families with Your Extra Eggs
Using Up Extra Eggs With Breakfast Freezer Cooking
Choosing Livestock (Part 3) …The Dollars and Cents of Starting a Small Farm
If you give them sugar water it helps even more! And Black Australorps are very hardy birds. I personally have about ten or so.
So cute – and nope, I’ve never come home to chicks in my bathtub. Dogs yes 🙂
Let the fun begin!!!
last spring I ordered 15 buff orpingtons and 1 rooster. well, they sent 2 roosters. We gave one away by mid summer because they were fighting. I get 10 to 15 eggs a day. Just a few weeks ago we started incubating eggs for our spring butchering. we’ll see how that goes. But again, I loves babies on the farm! We also plan to use our incubator when our hens get told and need to be replaced (or heaven forbid something get them). I really like the breed.
I like that they’re so pretty, mostly quiet, and they are a heavy body so they’ll make good cooking if/when it comes to that. I prefer the bigger chickens in the hen house for that dual purpose. We’ve done the white X broilers before (and may again) but I just don’t LIKE them at all. We had a Buff rooster for a while but any time he was out of the pen, he was a terror. I like letting the hens out to pick around the yard on the weekend when I can keep an eye on them. They go right back in the coop in the evenings and don’t cause a bit of trouble.