Circle M Farm

Spring on a homestead typically involves growth in all directions at once. Now our chicken flock has grown. By 50. Thanks to the US Postal Service and Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa, we’ve got buckets of adorable peeps in front of the woodstove this morning. Which means none of us will get any sleep around here for a little while.

The call came from my postmaster this morning around 7:30 am. I was to come to the back door and get my parcel. I felt a little bit like a character in Alias knocking at the back door of a federal building, which was fun, and it was even more fun when she handed me the wildly peeping perforated box. With a quick thanks, I scooted the box into my pre-heated car. These day-old chicks were packed tightly to stay warm, but still vulnerable to draft and chill. On this 22-degree morning, I was anxious to get them home. Luckily we had less than a five-minute drive.

A present! 50 chicks are packed into this 11-by-17-inch box.

When I opened the door into my mudroom, I immediately called for my kids, still not off to school yet, to come see the birds. “I can hear them peeping from here!” shouted Emma from a bedroom across the house. The younger a chick is, the louder it is. This ability is a great survival mechanism for chicks born in the wild or even in a barnyard. When a hen hatches a clutch of eggs, she’s generally keeping track of 10 to 15 babies and it’s those loud peeps that enable her to find the wayward ones. What it means for us in the house is that we won’t sleep for a few nights until the chicks realize their food and water is right next to them and that they can’t expect a mom to come cover them up when they call.

Hens generally sit on a pile of eggs about 21 days before the first one hatches, but they stay on the nest until all of the chicks are out. Which means that some, born first, simply remain for several days safely tucked under mom’s fluffy rump. They don’t eat, but they are kept very warm. That’s what makes it possible for hatcheries to send chicks out. The chicks don’t require food for several days, and in fact have absorbed their “yolk sac” while in the shell for nourishment. They absolutely cannot get colder than 90 degrees, however. So hatcheries require you to buy a minimum of 25 chicks so that they can pack them tight enough to keep each other warm during shipping.

These are quite cozy for their brief trip in the mail. The brown ones got cold when I opened up the top, and that’s why they’ve all clumped to one side. They do a great job of keeping each other’s temperature up.

However, by the time they’ve arrived at their destinations, the chicks are ready to eat and drink. I spread newspaper on the bottom of some galvanized water tubs and sprinkled food on top. Soon the chicks will need fluffier bedding, like wood shavings or hay, but for now the paper lets them see the food clearly. Since they have no mom to model pecking on the ground, I’m trying to make it as easy on them as possible. I also dipped each of their beaks into the water fountains as I transferred them into the tubs, to show them how to drink. This bunch immediately mastered the task and promptly drenched the paper by dipping and shaking their beaks in a drinking frenzy. They must have been thirsty!

The eating issue have been taken care of, the most pressing concern that remains is to keep the chicks at about 90 to 95 degrees for at least a week. I’ll lower the temperature every week to get them ready to live outside. They need more room now, because they have to be able to move to food and water and they need to grow, so keeping them crowded isn’t a healthy option. Most people immediately set up a heat lamp shining into whatever brooding pen they’ve got set up. This spring being as frigid as it is, I’ve still got a fire burning in the house, which is a wonderful heat source. The babies will stay on my hearth until they get too big to remain in an enclosure that sits by the woodstove.

Buckets of babies! These peeps will stay in front of the stove for a few days, then move to a bigger water tub heated with an overhead lamp.

A thermometer tucked into the brooder is a good tool, but the best temperature gauge is the chicks themselves. If they are uniformly spread out and exploring the pen, they are comfortable – like these in the picture. If they huddle up in a pile, they are too cold. If they all spread to the area farthest from the heat source, they are broiling!

We hope they’ll make excellent broilers, actually, in a few months time. Taking orders now for free-range heritage chickens…