Day Old Chick Update

In the past four weeks, our day old chicks have really grown!  In fact, they have moved off of the porch into their first coop...and then into their second coop!  The meat birds are now in a 12 x 12 portable pen that is designed to be moved daily.  They drink so much water that we are are thankful for a six gallon drip system.  I will post details on that this week.

The laying hens out grew their first coop and are now in a second coop.  The first coop needs a few modifications and then we will divide the laying hens between the two coops.  In about four more weeks, maybe sooner, they will move to the large chicken coop and covered yard.  Right now however, they could be lost if the lows at night are too low, so we keep them near the house so we can keep lights on them. 

The meat birds are growing big and strong.  I think we have 70 of them left.  The laying hens are doing well, but we are down on the white leg horns.  I don't remember how many we actually have left, but we lost several due to cats.  The cats really like the 'yellow' chicks. 

So there is our update on the current 4-H project.  More tomorrow!

The Egg Layers are here!

My second oldest son started an egg business when he was ten.  He delivered about 50 dozen eggs every two weeks to customers for about three years.  Then we took about a two year break, but with college around the corner, he has decided to start his business up again.  This time he hopes to have 100 dozen eggs for customers every two weeks. 

To achieve this goal, he ordered from Stromberg Hatchery.  He ordered 50 white leg horns; 25 brown leg horns; 25 Americana and 25 Rhode Island Reds.  As usual, he was very pleased with his order.  Upon arrival, we had no dead birds.  This is normal for this hatchery.  We have lost three white leg horns at this point due to the cold the other night and the heat lamps going out, but that is all.  And we do have two others that arrived with leg issues.  We are not sure if they will survive or not, but time will tell.

100 hens for egg production

 

 

 With 125 hens, they came in two boxes.  One box held 100 and the other box held 25 birds.  Of course, we had to make sure they knew how to drink.

Teaching the birds how to drink

 These birds are smaller than the Cornish X rocks, but they feather out quicker.  Today they are already getting their flight feathers.  We love their 'peeps'.  It really is music on the farm!

125 hens...four varieties

Mail Order Chickens

Many people don't believe me when I tell them that day old chicks are shipped through the US postal service.  When I assure them that they are, then I get a thousand questions about how it works and how in the world do the chicks survive.  So in today's blog, I'm going to share a little about our experience with "mail order chickens". 

There are several hatcheries that you can do business with which will mail you your chicks.  Basically, what happens is you pick up the phone and call the provider and place your order.  You will have to pay for the chickens when your order is placed.  Once you have placed your order, the hatchery will give you a ship date and an arrival date.  The chickens that we picked up yesterday were ordered from McMurray Hatchery.  This is only the second time that we have ordered from them and we were pleased with the results.  This order was for Jumbo Cornish X Rocks which my oldest son raises.  We just call them 'dinner' here on the farm.  And no, these are NOT genitically modified chickens!  I have seen many blogs about how these are 'freak' birds of nature.  WRONG!  These are hybrids and if you don't like hybrids, you better not eat anything that you don't grow yourself because organic vegetables are often hybrids.  That topic will be saved for another post.

The day before your chickens arrive, you should get everything ready.  Make sure you have your boxes, newspaper, feeders, FEED, water systems, heat lamps and working bulbs.

The day the chickens arrive, expect a call from your post office around 6 am requesting that you pick your birds up.  I suppose you could ask the carrier to delivery them, but I would never do that as the mortality rate would sky rocket!

When you get to the post office, there will be a bell to ring that lets the people in the back know that you are there to pick up your birds.  They are always happy when you come and get the birds in a timely fashion.

This box contains about 100 birds.  Yes, the Post Office is where you pick your birds up!

Now you need to get those birds home as they are thirsty and hungry!  We ordered a vitamin supplement to help our birds grow without any problems.  The electrolytes also help them rebound after a long trip.  But first, we give them honey water.  We take about a 1/4 cup of our fresh farm honey and mix it with a gallon of well water.  This is the first thing that our new birds drink.

Here is a box that we use for the first two days.

 When you arrive home, remove the dead birds.  You are sure to have one or two.  This time we had several, but they shipped extra so we still have our order.  If you are missing any birds from your order, call right away.  If you have lost enough birds, they will re-ship; if not, they will refund your money. 

We loaded our birds into the box, four at a time.  My two oldest boys moved the birds while I did the tally marks.  In the end, we had 83 birds of which some were male red stars.  They added extra of those birds to keep our original order of birds warm. 

As you put the birds in the box, you want to dip their beak in the honey water to help them learn how to drink and to give them energy.  Notice that we have marbles in the bottom of the water container.  If you don't put marbles or rocks in there, the baby birds WILL get in the water...they WILL get all wet...and they WILL die if you don't find the problem in time!  So put marbles or rocks in the water to PREVENT this problem from occurring. 

Dip the beak in the water to help them learn how to drink.

Once you have taught the birds how to drink, they will do just fine.

Drinking on their own.

 Now for some strange reason, I thought picking up feed for the birds yesterday would be easy...BUT I WAS WRONG!  We normally start the birds on game bird starter because it is not medicated.  HOWEVER, yesterday when we went to pick up our feed, I read the label like normal and much to my horror the feed contained poultry by-products!  After looking at every feed this store carried, I left with scratch and alfalfa pellets.  At home, I put the scratch in the blender.  The scratch is corn, wheat and millet.  It is an 8% protein which is not nearly high enough for the birds.  So I added alfalfa which is somewhere around 20% and some soy bean.  I know many people are anti soy-bean, but to be perfectly honest, I don't know what else I can use to get the protein up to the level that the birds need.  And then I added some of our oats.  Once that was finally milled, I put it in the feeder and fed the birds.

Home mixed feed for the baby chicks.

Here are the chickens in the box after 24 hours.  They are doing well.  We now have water with the vitamin in the water container.  We need to freshen the newspaper.  We have lots of food choices and heat options for them and they are happy as can be.

The birds can get out of the heat or get closer to the heat as they need.