Chicks Coming Out Our Ears!

On Saturday we received our 130 laying chicks in the mail. The mail lady called, and we ran down to pick up 2 big peeping boxes of chicks. We brought them home and dunked each chicks beak in the water. You must dip their beaks in the water so they learn how to drink and know where the water is. The brooder area has 2 heat lamps hooked up to a thermostat so that when it gets to hot in there it turns them off. Currently it stays around 90 degrees, nice and toasty. The girls were very excited with the new chicks, especially Shohannah as these were her first chicks. In about 17 weeks they will start laying eggs, they'll start out smaller sized and slowly grow to be to big for the cartons. When they first start laying we usually get quite a few double yolked. You can always tell when they have a double yolk, because they are the size of a regular egg or slightly bigger when the other are pullet sized.

Today we went to Runnings, the area farm store, and pickd up 50 broiler chicks. They will be ready for butcher in a few months. I tend to like my chickens bigger, 8-10 lbs.  One year we got behind on getting them into the butcher and they weighed around 15 lbs. They looked like turkeys. I usually end up butchering a few of them myself before I take them to the butcher. I like the butchering part, just not the nasty wet feathers smell.