Tina is expanding!!! She ordered 50 new chicks from Murray McMurray hatchery. If you don't know, you can mail order chickens. What you do is go online and order them and the select the delivery date. They will ship day old chicks priority mail with the post office. The post office will then call you (at 6:00 a.m.) and have you come pick up the baby chick. I'm sure all of this doesn't sound too bad... So now let me tell you how it happened in my house.
Feb. 28th was the scheduled ship date or so I thought. It was pouring down rain. Tori and Tina were getting ready for school and my phone rang. I was still in bed because I had been sick over the weekend and I had already gotten up and sent an email to my boss saying I needed to take the day off because I was still not feeling very good. It was about 6:15 in the morning. I guess they shipped the birds the day before because it was the post office telling me that they had a noisy package for me and I could come at any time to pick them up. Tina really, really wanted to go with me so I said hurry up and get ready. I figured we could run to the post office, pick them up, get them back to the house, do the stuff you need to them when they first get home and I could still have her to school probably less than 30 minutes late. With all the storms and rain I figured she could be a few minutes late and blame it on that.
So we head down there to get the baby chicks. When you first bring them home, you have to take each one out individually and dunk their head into the water. I'm not sure why other than without a mother I guess this is something they don't learn. So Tina sets out to dunk 50 baby chicks head into the water. Then she gets them some food and they are all set. During their first week they are supposed to be kept at 90 degrees. I knew we needed to get the lights on them, but I still had to find the light bulbs. So at this point I figured the house was at 73 degrees and they would be fine until I got back from taking Tina. At this point I might mention that Tina paid for these herself and they cost a little over $150.
45 minutes later, I am back home from running to take Tina to school and she is not even late. I'm thinking I am doing good... So I start looking for some 100 watt light bulbs to take down to the baby chicks. When I get down there I am shocked. They got so cold that they huddled together. This is what I expected. However, they did it in the corner where the water was and they were all wet! I grabbed the digital laser thermometer and the were at 70 degrees and shivering. Now about 15 of them look 1/2 dead. They can't even hold their head up. I quickly decide that I need to divide them up into the "savable" and "unsavable". I put about 7 or 8 of the worst in a small box with a light right on top of them. I take 1 that I just knew was dead and put her back in the box to deal with in a little bit, and I get a high power spotlight to warm up the others. I stand there for 45 minutes until the majority are out of danger.
My 7 or 8 that are in the small box, I leave alone with the light for another hour or so. When I go back to check on them, they are all holding their head up and I think they are out of the woods. I am so excited that I have now only lost a single of the baby chicks. It just happen to be one of the ones that Tina only ordered 1 of and was the smallest and she would notice that it was no longer with us, but I still think I have avoided a tragedy.
Now it is about 10:30 in the morning and I am still feeling very bad and about every 30 minutes I make the trip down the 17 steps to the rec room to check on these birds. On one of my trips, I decide that I have to deal with the dead one and go over to the abandoned box and look in. And what do I see???? Her take a BREATH. So now I am in rescue mode. I get a towel, the heating blanket and carry her upstairs with me and I hold her on that heating blanket. After about 30 minutes she is holding her head up on her own. I force some water down her and she even pecks at a speck of food... Holy Cow!!! I now have saved them all. I am so excited.
It has been 3 weeks since all of this drama. In the end we have lost 3 chicks - 2 I am not sure why, this just happens sometimes, but about day 4 we lost the little one that I saved on that day. Now they have grown. Rod has been out of town 2 weeks in a row and a new coop expansion is high on the list of things to do. Last weekend I did get some cages together so I could get these 50 smelly, noisy chicks OUT OF THE HOUSE. The last picture will show their temporary home until Rod can get back in town and get a spot ready for them over at the coop.
Below is 1/2 of them. With 50 we had to have 2 buckets full.
Posing for a picture so Tina could put her on Facebook.
Growing bigger..
Evicted from the house :-) They have a doorway cut so they can get into that blue bin in the background and it does still have a 100 watt lightbulb to keep them warm at night.
