Baby Chicks Meet G&S

They arrived!  The 80 chicks!  (Really 81, since you always get a free one.) Now only 30 or 31 are for us, the rest are layers for Glenn & Rosemary.  We were so worried because they should have arrived yesterday.  And then by this morning when they weren't at the Post Office in the first delivery of mail, I was getting very upset.  But they arrived in the second morning delivery (who knew we got 2 in March?) and are in very good shape.  This is the first time we have had all the chicks arrive alive, usually we lose 1 or 2.  One chick is iffy, and another looks fine but won't stop hollering like it is hurt. Still the mild weather had to help compared to the March chick arrivals when it has been in the single digits.

The first thing to do when the chicks come home, is to unpack them and dip each beak in water, making sure each chick gets a good swallow.

Here about half of them are out in the kiddie wading pool we use as their first coop. It is covered with an old sheet, which we will take off tomorrow.  Chicks will eat the shavings we use for litter, instead of their chick food, if the sheet wasn't there. By tomorrow they will understand, more or less, what is food and what isn't.  

See the light colored chick in the bottom left quadrant? That is the free one that is always sent. It is almost invariably a rooster! And the fun part is to quess what kind it is. It is an off white with a tan spot on top of its head and looks nothing like anything in the catalog. I'm guessing either a Delaware (chicks not pictured in the catalog) or a white version of a Blue Andalusian (only about half the Blue Andalusian end up blue, the rest are white, black or mottled, I gather).  

And the G&S, well that and Dar Williams is what is playing on the Ipod. A living room full of chicks, an Ipod with music and podcasts and WoW loaded, a laptop with Wifi, a good book, a cup of hot coffee and some shortbread fingers, and Tom feeling well - who could want anything more? 

tags: baby  chicks