Our chickens were born this past Tuesday, shipped out on Wednesday, and sat for an entire day at the post office in Missouri where they first arrived. The tracking told me they wouldn’t be here til Saturday which made me very nervous since usually chicks arrive in 2 days and they seemed to really be pushing it with Saturday.
But this morning at 7AM on the dot we got the call from our local post office. They had arrived! We threw on our clothes, brushed our teeth, grabbed our gloves and masks, and headed to get them.
Here’s a video of them peeping on the way home. Someone else had a box of chicks twice as big at the post office. I was surprised they gave us all that time to sleep in because the first time we ordered chicks/ducklings they called us at 4:30AM! Pretty thankful.
Got them home and unboxed them, see the video here.
The company, Cackle Hatchery, that we’ve used before and are quite happy with, usually sends an extra chick or two. This time they sent us THREE extras. Looks like we have 4 Cornish Cross, 4 New Hampshire Red, 4 Black Australorp, and 3 Barred Rock. Only the Barred Rock are sexed (all female) and the other ones we’re taking our chances with because if they end up being roosters we’ll just eat the mean ones anyway. Or that’s the thought, anyway. Actually we bought them to eat most/all of them, but it sounds like Australorps have fabulous sweet roosters from what I’m reading and it wouldn’t hurt to have a guard for our Easter Egger hens, PLUS a way to actually create more chickens in the future if need be. You know, that thought that’s always in my mind about wanting to be totally sustainable? Would probably help if we have a way for the animals to reproduce. 😉
Okay, here’s an update on the fermenting of chicken and pig feed: It’s. Not. Working. Ugh. 3 times out of 6 it has worked out and those numbers are just not good enough for me to feel it’s worth it because it’s a waste of so much feed. I’m so upset but I’m not about to give up, I just clearly need to tweak what I’m doing and keep trying. But interestingly enough today one of my Instagram farm “friends” posted about fermenting chicken feed and the video she made makes her feed look the way mine looks when I decide it’s gone bad and toss it out. So now I’m VERY confused! When it gets that filmy layer on top I consider that to be mold and it also doesn’t smell good when it gets that. But hers had that and she seemed happy with the whole batch. So WTH. My other batches have been bubbling like crazy but with no film I considered them to be good. In my mind those batches smell different than the “bad” batches. This has confused me all the more.
Currently we are dealing with Day 1 of seven days of rain predicted. We are under a flash flood warning and in the last hour and a half our property has flooded more than we have seen it in our two years here. The good news is that our property is really good at moving water down the hills and into the creek bed. The bad news is it’s rained so fast it hasn’t been able to drain properly yet. Christine went out to check on all the animals (we knew rain was expected so baby goats were already inside). The mama/teen goats were huddled in a corner of the barn together. The pigs were throwing a tantrum because they wanted into their night enclosure and refused to go into their new shelter Christine just built.
The tortoise needed rescuing and he is now inside on his heat mat. The buck saw the pigs go in and asked to go in, too. Everyone has what they need and everyone is now dry and comfortable. <3
By the way, “inside” does not mean in our house. We’re pretty weird but not *that* weird (yet??!). Actually this time around with chicks we have both said no to having them be raised in the house. Just too smelly for that 8 weeks that it takes them to grow big enough to be safe outdoors. So they’re happily (we’ve happily put them) in the office building with their heat lamp.