Don't put your EGGS all in ONE basket!

We learned a lesson last night...thankfully it was not a 'hard' lesson.  As I got up to let the dogs out and check on the chicks, all was well.  That was at 1:00 am.

At 8:00 am I thought I heard a cat in with the chicks.  Now we have over 200 birds as another 125 arrived on Friday.  So I'm laying in bed thinking that it is cold and I'm wondering if the wood stove is out and if I really need to check on those birds.  Since it was over $500.00 in birds, I decided to get out of the warm bed and see what was going on out there.  I was thankful to learn there were no cats!  I was not so happy to see that there were no heat lamps on however!!!

Our son had plugged all of the heat lamps into one power strip which stopped working!  Thus, all of the chickens were without heat on a night where the low was below freezing!  It looked like we had lost several birds, but with quick work of extension cords and warm honey water, we have not lost a single bird!

With the low dropping to the teens over the next few nights, I'm very thankful we learned not to use only one power strip before the lows were WAY low!  I hope someone will benefit from this lesson.

Remember...don't plug all of your heat lamps into ONE power strip!  If you blow a fuse, you chicks will have no heat lamps!

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.

Neighbors and Friends

One of the nice things of being a homesteader is being able to 'visit' with friends.  It seems to me, that when I lived in the city, that I did not even know my neighbor's name, much less where they worked. 

I remember when my husband and I moved to the country how our neighbors would just stop by and leave "welcome gifts".  Often, when we arrived home from work, there would be a note on our front door with a package of food on the steps.  The note always said how they were disappointed that they missed us and how they hoped that we would meet soon.  And often we did meet them soon!

Then there was the fact that we had no mailbox.  So our neighbor behind us stuck a 2 x 1 in the ground that was about five feet tall.  He cut a 'slit' in the wood and placed a note in the slit.  That became our 'mailbox' for about a year!

I remember coming home from work one day to find that another neighbor had pulled a complete fence line for us!  That was over 20 years ago and that fence still stands today!  I often think of him...he moved a couple of states away...and I wonder how he and his wife are doing.  Does he know that we still remember him fondly and smile every time we think of him?

The pace in the country is slower.  It is nice.  It is nice to be able to 'give' back.  Last year when a friend was giving birth to her fifth child, I was called to watch the other four children.  The call came at 5:00 am.  I met her husband for the first time around noon when he came home.  It was neat because neither of us cared that we 'looked' less than presentable.  What was important at 5:00 am was the fact that I arrived to their home safely and they made it to the hospital safely too.  The fog was BAD that morning!

And today...my son and I visited with another friend.  She is due to have a baby any day now.  My son made the baby a beautiful blanket that he wove on his loom.  I'll post pictures of it next week.  Trust me, it is BEAUTIFUL!  It was very nice to be able to go and just visit with her today.  We made bread and just talked.  Her life will be changing soon.  She will have diapers to change, toys to pick up and spit up to clean up.  But today, we just sat back and talked and relaxed.  It's just country to slow down.  And I'm thankful that I make that opportunity to slow down...and smell the roses....