So I checked in on the progress of our fuzzy little friends and it seems they made their way over our heads sometime in the night and are now in New Hampshire.

I called our local post office this morning and let them know we had live chicks that are on their way. They thanked us for the heads-up and said they’d call us as soon as our babies arrived.

Hopefully all three of them survive the trip and get here safely.

You know, that really is a harrowing journey for those poor lil’ chicks who are just starting their lives…

I mean, they spend 24 hours exhausting themselves, pipping and pecking their way out of what to them must seem like a mahogany-thick jail cell. Then they breathe oxygen for the first time and realize their mother is nowhere to be found. Scared, they rest for a moment in a warm and glowing incubator that gently rocks them from side to side every few hours… Until a giant featherless hand snatches them up, prods at their gonads for a moment, sticks ’em in the neck with some medicine, and then drops them into a box…

And that’s before they have to deal with rides on both an airplane and an 18-wheeler, and then bounced and shuffled around a post office.

These poor little girls will have had a very rough couple days before they ever make it to our farm.

Hopefully once they’re here things settle down for them, though. We’ve prepped their brooder, which will be in the laundry room for the first few days they’re here…just because it’s warmer in there than in the mud room.

The paper towel is down so the chicks can walk around without hurting their little legs. Also they’ll be less distracted by the shavings, which means they’ll find their food/water bowls easier.

The black monolith there in the middle is the brooder heater which is, unfortunately, missing a couple of its legs.

We actually use this same heater in the chickens’ coop outside when the weather drops below -10°, and so we removed two of the legs so it would stand upright in there. Sadly, I have no idea what we did with the legs, though. So, we NEK’d it and just used whatever we had laying around.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Hey, aren’t those wooden blocks? Won’t they get hot and, um, burn?”
And my answer to that would be: Actually, yeah, that’s a good point… I don’t know.

I did just look up the burn point of Michigan Basswood, which is what they’re made of, and Google is helpfully telling me “Basswood is considered easy to burn” So it’s very possible that we’ll have to swap them out with something else that will hold it horizontally.

***Actually I just went in there and checked after having the heater on for the last hour and they’re not hot at all…so I think it will be fine.

That said, it’s starting to get late in the day and I’ve yet to hear from our post office, so it could be that they don’t actually arrive today. Which would mean that the poor lil’ girls are stuck in New Hampshire overnight…

Will keep you posted.

j.s.