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The chicks we ordered in February finally arrived! We selected the earliest ship date when we ordered them, but even then it was a good 2 month wait. But now they’re here.
Sunday afternoon we got a call from the Post Office. They left a message on our machine (we were at church) saying our chicks had arrived. Stephen left at 6:30 Monday morning to go pick them up.
The company we ordered from is fantastic (Murray McMurray Hatchery). They ship very quickly and even included three extra chicks. One was a rare breed, one was an extra male Araucana (the colored egg chicken), and an extra of the meat birds we had ordered. Yay! We’re not 100% sure what the rare breed is, but we’re pretty sure it’s a Crevecoeur. It’s a cute little grey fuzzball with a poufy little hat of feathers on it’s head.
We ordered quite the combination of birds – some solely for meat, some as layers, and the colored egg birds. That gave us 29 chicks, plus the 11 that hatched last week.
Then yesterday the phone rang. It was Stephen’s dad. He knew of someone who was moving, and couldn’t take all their chickens with them. Did we want them? Uh, yeah, we’d love to have them!
Stephen thought there’d be maybe a half dozen or so. There were 7 full-grown birds and 18 more babies! These are older than our other babies (thankfully!) and should make for some really good eating in another couple of months.
So. . .that brings us to 85 chickens, if Stephen counted correctly. Our coop and fenced-in area is large enough, thankfully. We’ve been wanting to raise most of the chicken we eat, and it looks like we’re well on our way toward that goal.
But like Stephen said this morning. . .what God is doing is beyond me. I can’t wait to see what He has planned!
I actually thouht they’d be noisier! I guess it’s a good thing. Let me know if that special one continues to sleep on it’s head. : )
Kimberly, that’s funny. I love the McMurray catalog. Ours is getting rather dog-eared and tattered because we look at it so much.
Allison, you saw them. . .are they as noisy as you thought they’d be?
Wow. That’s a lot of little chicks! Is it really noisy?
I want to get chickens when we move so much! I used to get the Murray McMurray catalogs and circle everything I wanted.
My mother goes back and forth with her coop/pen/slaughter/feeding/vaccinations concerns.
This month the big concern is not knowing how to cut up a whole chicken anymore.