We just got an email that our Cackle Hatchery order has been shipped!
For those unfamiliar with the world of chickens, chicks can be shipped at one day old and can survive for the first three days without food or water. This is because they have absorbed all the nutrients from the egg and aren’t hungry for a while.
In the wild I suppose they would just be sleeping under their mama for a while until they get hungry and walk out into the world. Buying chicks from a place like Tractor Supply does not mean you are “saving” them from this process—they still are shipped from hatcheries to Tractor Supply!
So it’s really no worse.
It might have been nice to go to a real local chicken farm to get baby chicks, but we’re rather picky about breeds because our 8 year old will be working hard taking care of them and so we needed the most docile breeds possible.
This order that was shipped includes 5 silkies of mystery color (woohoo, a surprise!), 3 Easter Eggers (I’m hoping for a pink egg layer as well as some blues), 3 Barred Rocks, and 4 ducklings.
Supposedly we also had 4 ducklings shipped from My Pet Chicken today, but we’ve yet to receive an email confirmation about that so who knows. We paid extra for the birds to be sexed so that we could be sure to get female birds (since we’re after eggs and would prefer the eggs not to be fertilized) but some types of chickens are too hard to sex at a day old, like silkies, so those could include a few roosters (please not FIVE roosters, EEK!).
I’ve already been asked by a city friend with chicks if I would take any roosters the hatchery sent her by mistake and I said, “Absolutely not!”
We live on almost 20 acres yet we can hear two neighbors’ roosters morning, noon, night, and about every 3 minutes around the clock. I almost feel like going over there and ending the noise myself, but then I remember that I’m supposed to be a peaceful yogi and just breathe through disturbances, LOL. Well, that and I believe it may be frowned upon to shoot animals that don’t belong to us even if they are obnoxious as heck.
In…out…breathing…smiling…
Don’t.
So if we end up with roosters we will be freecycling them to someone else who doesn’t mind the noise as much as we do.
One of our farm friends ended up finding a snake in her quail cage with a quail in it’s mouth. I felt so badly for her (seriously, the pictures were traumatic) that I offered her 3 of our guinea keets. We’ll be getting five more in June, so no harm done, and how I’m going to take care of 27 birds all in brooders for the next 6 weeks is beyond me. So she’s coming tonight to take three of them.
Yes, I’m aware guineas are loud…yet I have found them to be less annoying than roosters. Kind of like how my dog has a high pitched yodel that bothers me much less than the corgi’s non-stop barking. It’s different.
So stay tuned for birdie cuteness and if you’re local you may want to come cuddle these sweeties while they’re teeny.
My motto seems to be GO BIG OR GO HOME.
Going from never having raised a chick to raising 27 minus the 3 that are leaving us is pretty crazy. Makes for good stories later on.
Seriously. It’s going to be an adventure.