Last night we turned the milkhouse heater on in the cold room to warm it up. We also set the 5 gallon water bucket in there with the electrolytes in it. I got up at 4AM this morning as usual and went up to turn the brooder heat plates on. They take a couple hours to heat up and the Post Office said the chicks would be in around 6:30AM. The cold room was 88F. Chicks need 95F for the first 5 days after hatching.
I went up at 6AM to spread feed and fill the feeders. I discovered that when we picked feed up last time, instead of the 20# we had been promised out of the 50# we ordered, we’d only gotten 5# of chick starter. So I spread what we had on the floor and filled the trays with the warm water. I left one open so I could dip beaks to teach them to drink.
The Post Office called at 6:20 and we went down and got them. This time we were bound and determined to get a good count. We’ve messed the count up multiple times over the last couple years, never knowing how many we really had.
So I counted them into an empty compartment of the box and then dipped each beak into the water until the chick swallowed. Once I had about half of them done, I had to close the top of the tray. They were all wading in the water faster than I could pull them out. Having the top closed made dipping beaks much harder, especially when there were already lots of heads in the holes. But in the end we got a solid count, 95 birds (we ordered 90) with only 1 flat. There are 45 Barred Rocks and 45 Black Australorps, all female (we hope).
They were still real noisy when we left, but it was still 88F in the room and the brooder plates were plenty warm. If they had been cold, as they were in the box, they would have all been under the plates. They had already started eating from the floor and were obviously drinking well, so we left them to it.
My husband went to find a bag of organic chick starter to fill their trays with. The stuff on the floor will keep them going for a couple hours.
