2020 Chicks in the Mail!

I post this every year, but here is this year's rendition.  Early this morning before chores, Tricia got the call from the Post Office that we had a package waiting that was ALIVE!  The 50 baby chicks we ordered from Ideal Hatchery in Cameron, Texas had arrived.  Tricia drove to the US Post Office in town to pick them up.

The motto of the US Postal Service states:

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

Well, Coronavirus can be added to that list.  The pandemic did not stop the post office from delivering our chicks.  Tricia peeked in the box to find that all was well!:

They seem a little tightly packed, but that keeps them warm.  They were all alive and seemed to be in perfect health, but it was time to get them out of the box.

This year we're actually raising them about a month or so late.  Before this virus outbreak, we had a wedding to attend in Houston and wanted to schedule their arrival for AFTER the wedding.  You can't leave baby chicks for a weekend without food and water.  This is the first year that we don't start them off in the brooder in the garage on top of wood chips.  This year, on Day 1, they are going on grass - actually clover.

Tricia took them out of the box, dipping each one's beak into water to ensure they drink.  While she did that, she counted them.  Usually the hatchery will throw in a couple or three extra chicks as lagniappe in the event that a few die during transit.  Not this time.  There were exactly 50 of them.

They began eating the chick starter in the feed troughs immediately and scattered out in the brooder.  If they are cold, they huddle up in a pile under the heat lamp.  Some get trampled and die.  They are evenly spaced, signifying that the temperature is perfect.

The chicks' brooder this year is in the chicken tractor where they will eventually reside without the brooder for their 8 week expected lives.  The chicken tractor still has its covering we topped it with as we used it for a greenhouse.  Sitting atop the tractor is Ginger, our cat.  She is apparently guarding things in "the cat-bird seat."

As I hold the little fluff-ball in my hand, I always say to myself every year, "You are so cute now, but in a short while, that changes.  This chick is a Cornish Cross Meat Bird and will change very quickly into a big, muscular meaty monster.

We will track their growth each week.  The goal at the end of Week 8 is an Eight Pound bird that will yield a Six Pound Carcass.  (We calculated the amount of feed we'd need for the next 8 weeks to raise them to maturity and purchased it all in advance in preparation for the possibility of feed stores being closed.  We're all set!)  Some people are hoarding toilet paper - we're hoarding 20% Protein Chick Grower.  Strange birds, indeed!