Hey...you think you got enough of us in here?

Just like ordering fruit trees in advance......the farmer will order his poultry in advance too. This assures that the chicks your wish to have....and the amount....is guaranteed. You'd be surprised that darn near every chicken hatchery is sold out in early Spring. December or early January is the best time to get your orders in.

These days all we have to do is turn on our desk top computers....hit a few buttons......and the chicks will arrive to the local post office for a front counter pick up......the clerks there will call us here at the farm to inform us of the arrivals. Four dozen crammed in chicks per box. I'll emphasize...crammed in! First time I got several boxes of these screaming critters...I was horrified of the sight!

Well......it turns out that by adding the chicks in these boxes so tightly...there is good reason for doing that. The body heat is retained.....which is really super critical. These little ladies are placed under a heat lamp once we get them home...... for several weeks before being released to the protective enclosure. Remember hawks?

Ordering the breed is tricky. Some mature chickens are for meat...some for their eggs. I choose chickens that get extra heavy.....so that they cannot fly over the coop's yard fence! We will have three more boxes coming over the period of  six weeks .....this year the coop yard will have 200 ladies and just one lucky rooster. Oh my!

I really do indeed know how the chicks feel ......being shoved into close quarters....screaming all around....and the rudeness.

I used to ride in the school bus :-)