Cheep, cheep, cheep

The baby chicks we ordered from Murray McMurray arrived this morning. All 50 of them. We lost one within the first hour, but the fact that none were dead when they arrived is pretty good. They all look happy now, running around the little pen. I will post a pic or two once I get back down to check on them. They are so cute. I have mentioned to several people today that I almost feel bad knowing that we will be eating some of them later this year. Just the boys, though, and they tend to be meanies anyhow, so you don't feel quite as remorseful once they are old enough to process.
You may wonder why we order our chicks. Well, for one hatching eggs can be difficult. Being a young farm, we do not have money to invest in incubators and hens are hit and miss as mothers. We will try them out, though, and if we find a good mama, we will use her. I also wanted a very large diversity to produce good healthy birds. What we ordered this year was a mix of whatever they had at the end of the week. We have no clue what kind of birds we got this year-just that we got a great looking mix. In the future, I would love to hatch out my own birds. I think as long as we sell meat, though, we may end up ordering just to be sure we have enough. If we get a good incubator in the future, this would be no longer necessary, but for now the cost of the machine vs the cost of just buying them doesn't make sense. Plus, its like the stork showing up when the post office calls to have you come pick up your babies!