The chicks have arrived, farming calendar

Received our first batch of chicks for sale this summer. In this batch there's 50 roosters, 100 buff orpington hens, and 100 cornish cross meat chicks. We also ordered 25 bantam chicks because I like to keep a small flock of bantams on the farm.
This is a buff orpington chick on the right, and a bantam chick on the left. Notice the size difference in the feet between these two birds. Buff orpingtons are a heritage breed egg layer, and are really quite pretty when they're full grown.
Here's the same bantam chick next to a cornish cross chick. I'll take some more pictures to compare these two as they grow. The cornish cross will be 4-6lbs in 8 weeks. The bantam will be about 1/4 of a pound in the same timeframe. This cornish cross chick weighs 50% more than the buff orpington chick at this age. It doesn't look that much bigger, but you can feel it when you pick them up.

This is a free chick of some sort. I don't know what breed it is, but it looks interesting.

It's got that pronounced stripe down the back and face markings. So it may be a sexlink... these free chicks are almost always roosters, which is fine by me. I like roosters.

Shipping mortality

Buff orpingtons; zero dead on delivery, but one with a birth defect that'll probably be fatal

cornish cross; zero dead on delivery. all look OK.

white leghorn roosters; all 25 doing well.

delaware roosters; all 25 doing well

straight run bantam; 16 out of 25 dead on arrival, expect a few more to die overnight.

It may be too early in the year to ship bantams. they don't have the body mass to withstand cold very well, so I'm guessing they got chilled somewhere in transit, poor little guys. I'm going to ask that they ship the replacements in a month so it's a little warmer for them.

Prep for recieving chicks

Fill bins with chips, fill wateres and feeders

Put lamps in and test surface temperature under lamps for 100 degrees. Adjust lamps to provide that temp at the surface.

allow the lamps to run overnight to make sure that the chips are dry and warm when the chicks arrive.

Putting chicks in the bins

Sort through the chicks and segretate those that don't appear to be doing well

dip each chicks beak into the water

Observe to make sure they've found the light, and tap the food to get them to notice it

24 hour check

Count and tally overall mortality, call hatchery and get replacements. Refill food and water, check temperatures again.

We have pre-ordered 300-700 chicks per month for the next 5 months.

pigs and chickens and dogs

I keep a few chickens around each of the pig pens. They clean up the crumbs from the feeders, and are interesting to watch. They tend to hang around in the shelters at night, roosting on top of pigs, or on the top of the shelter itself if the weather allows

One of the reasons I can have chickens is this guy. He, and the other four, keep the raccoons and possums and weasels and coyotes and other predators away.

The problem with him, and his mate and offspring, is that they can jump.

These are the two halves of the steer I slaughtered a week or so ago. Notice that the halves are looking a little ragged on the bottom? Today I found all of the dogs doing their best vertical leaps trying to eat the steer.

So we had a little talk about the order of eating on the farm, and their position in that order, and all was well again. I'll have to trim off a few pounds. The entire pack was unanimous in the opinion that the beef was tasty. I agree with them.

Oh well. Merry Christmas, dogs!