Baby Chicken Week

The chicken countdown has begun. As of right now, our chickies are hatching at some undisclosed location in some unknown part of the country. I wish I knew more, but the mysterious MyPetChicken isn't giving anything away, they only say they don't personally hatch or send the chicks. Sounds like the Chicken Mafia is on top of it, for real. They've been shipped Express Mail - so we should be getting them Tuesday or Wednesday. We have the brooder set up, have food ready, have planned a half-day at work for when they arrive, so we're all set for the baby chicken stork to make a call (AKA our USPS delivery man).

We ordered 4 chicks, each a different kind because we wanted some diversity. We also specifically bought birds that are cold hardy, since Chicago winters tend to be pretty harsh and we didn't want to deal with frostbite and heating the coop. You can order chicks in three different sex variations: males (cockerel), females (pullets), or straight runs (non-sexed chicks). Obviously, only females lay eggs, so we ordered females only - these cost slightly more than males and straight runs since the demand is higher. If you were raising chickens to eat and lay eggs, you could get a straight run and then only eat the boys - kinda the Valerie Solanas method of chicken keeping.

Here's what we got:

Australorp
Barred Plymouth Rock
Golden Laced Wyandotte
Rhode Island Red

I know some of the photos suck on those links, but you get the idea. Hopefully next time I write I'll have photos of our new arrivals.

Ordering Chicks

Finding an inexpensive supplier of chicks that will ship you a small number can be difficult. Yes, there are a million different hatcheries out there, but it takes time to comb through their websites (which are almost universally poorly designed) to find information about order limits and prices. The vast majority of hatcheries will ship a minimum of 10 or 25 chicks, the reason being that at those numbers keeping them warm is a natural process. Also, for the better part of the last century mostly commercial operations were ordering chicks, so hatcheries designed their business to accommodate them, which means minimums of 10-25 chicks. That leaves most of us out, unfortunately, unless you're organized enough to create a buying club in your area. Different ordering options are popping up slowly, but some take a little digging.

Those hatcheries that ship fewer chicks typically put some kind of heating material in the box and will require Express Shipping - i.e. expensive shipping. MyPetChicken is one place, and this is where we eventually ended up ordering ours, but it's more expensive than I wanted ($30 shipping). This was our last resort, due to some lack of foresight on my part. Apparently, farms order chicks in advance of when they need them (ridiculous, right??). I really wanted to find a local hatchery, so I could support the state economy and eliminate the shipping costs. My first call was to a local feed store, which let me know they get chicks in May - too late for us, we want eggs before there's snow on the ground. Then, I happened upon a state hatchery listing in Backyard Poultry and found Nature's Hatchery in Naperville, IL.

This fit the bill, although their prices for small orders are high - $10 a bird - you can pick them up from the hatchery eliminating the shipping costs. Sounds good right? Gave them a call in February to place an order, talked to a friendly sales person who told me they were sold out till June. Clearly, if you do this as a business you're more "with it" and order more than 3 weeks before you want baby chickens. Ugh.