Birth Announcement: It's a girl, and a girl, and a girl.......

 Persistence and/or obstinance have paid off on the old farm and we finally can count our chickens. (They’ve hatched). They arrived early Thursday at the now somewhat infamous Mount Ulla, North Carolina post office and our postal contact and chicken advisor Jennifer again called for us to pick up the new peepers. In our extensive poultry research we learned that the appropriate term for a group of chirping females of the chicken variety is “biddies”. Go figure. The upside of ordering day old chicks as opposed to eggs is that you can order all hens so you don't have to deal with rooster issues. The down side of ordering all hens is that it has significantly swayed the hormonal balance in the barnyard. All twenty-six arrived in good shape in a cardboard box. Apparently even the Postal Service has a heart for baby chicks and doesn’t run them through a piece of automated handling equipment that folds, spindles and mutilates very effectively. We now have twelve Barred Rock hens to add to our four “adult” hens living in the chicken coop as well as thirteen Buff Orpington hens and a free “mystery rare and exotic chick” of the breeder’s choice. Chris identified the loner as a Japanese Phoenix chick. The males (roosters) in Japan could have tail feathers up to twenty feet long. Chris is hoping it’s a rooster. Gayle wants to know who’s going to keep that tail clean.

The chicks are shipped as soon as they are hatched and have not eaten or had water yet. The first task is to teach the little orphans how to drink water. Since Chris has been drinking water for quite a while and Ed only drinks Dr. Pepper and rarely ever shares, it was Chris’s job to instruct the class. After a little effort and some issues with a couple of class clowns the babies decided that drinking was good and they would continue to practice. The marbles in the pie pan are to keep them from drowning. They are all living in a one-room brooder box with a heat lamp for the next four weeks until they grow adult feathers and can deal with cooler nights in the coop.

While the babies were napping we decided that the big birds had been in solitary confinement for long enough to learn where home is and that we could let them out in the chicken run for the first time. It was a popular decision among the flock and they were happy to scratch around in the dirt looking for something interesting to put in their mouths. After watching them and the goats for a while we decided that animals would not do most of the gross things that they do if they had opposable thumbs, but God must have created them without thumbs for our entertainment. Woody and Charlotte were very interested in the big chickens that are a bit taller and much more aggressive than they are. It is probably a good thing that the dogs don’t know they are dogs because the inevitable confrontation between John Adams and the pups ended in the dogs leaving rapidly and very insulted. I should have warned the dogs that not everyone likes to have their butt sniffed on a first meeting. Live and learn.

Farmer Art continues to heal and will be back to his old self in no time. The goat girls are doing well and were treated to a worming and a new salt lick this weekend. They weighed in at forty-five pounds each and are half way to becoming our first attempt at animal husbandry. There has been discussion of pigs and cows recently, but Gayle just plugs her ears and starts singing show tunes really loud when the topic comes up. Ed keeps reminding her that we need to have all of the animals that came in the Fisher Price farm because that is his earliest farming memory, although he recently found out that chickens don’t really have a square hole on their bottom so you can stick them on the fence post. Maybe that’s another “mystery rare and exotic chick”