Cheryl and Mike at Wick PlaceFarm have relatives in Sun Prairie, a small town near Madison, Wisconsin. My son and his family live in Madison. Since we were both planning on being that
area for Easter Sunday weekend, it made sense to do the chick transaction then,
and they arranged their hatch schedule to accommodate that. The chicks pipped their way into the world in
the early hours of Sunday morning. Mike
and Cheryl gathered my five little girls into a box and headed for Sun Prairie
later that same morning. Kathy and I
were waiting for them in a park along with my son, daughter-in-law and two
grandsons. The temperature was in the
low fifties and there was a light mist in the air. The park had a tremendous playground, so my
three-year-old grandson was having a fantastic time and was oblivious to the
cool weather and the mist. The rest of
us were less easily persuaded that being in the park in that weather was a good
time.
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| Baby Legbars Pipping Their Way Into the World |
When Mike and Cheryl drove up,
we didn’t spend much time in idle chitchat due to the less than idyllic weather,
but got right down to the business of chick buying. By one o’clock we were on I-94 headed for
Minnesota with a box of chicks. The
cardboard box contained a chemically activated heat pouch to provide some
warmth for the babies but that only lasted for a short time and then it was
obvious from their continuous peeping that the chicks were cold. They huddled against the side of the box and
cuddled tightly with each other to stay warm.
We kept the car heater cranked, but we couldn’t maintain the ninety
degree temperatures that baby chicks need.
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| Box of Cold Chicks |
I poured water from a water
bottle into a jar lid and dipped each chick’s beak into the water and made sure
that each one actually drank. Drinking
water is not instinctive in baby chicks so they must be taught. Other than that, I left them in the box and
didn’t handle them. I wanted them to
imprint on Courtney the hen and not on me.
We arrived home a little
after five o’clock and I headed to the coop with the box of chicks. This was crunch time. Would Courtney accept these chicks? I scooped the golf balls that Courtney has
been sitting on for weeks from the nest and replaced them with the peeping baby
chicks. I shouldn’t have worried about
Courtney. She immediately spread her
wings over the babies, began clucking softly, and preening their fluff with her
beak. She didn’t even seem surprised. The chicks stopped peeping and cuddled in.
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| Mom & Babies Bonded |
On Sunday night the temperature dipped below
freezing. I’ve got a heat lamp in the
brooder coop and the coop is insulated, but it was still way too cold for baby
chicks. The chicks, though, were all
cuddled under their mom and had a warm and cozy night. Monday morning I expected that Courtney would
leave the nest with her babies so she and they could eat and drink, but she didn’t
budge. Maybe it was too cold for her to
venture out. By mid-afternoon she had still not moved, so I put the chick water
font right in front of her and she drank for a long time. Then, I dipped the babies’ beaks in the water
once again. At 6 PM, when she still hadn’t
gone out, I dumped some chick crumbles in the nest right in front of Courtney. She pecked at it ravenously, and then the
chicks peaked out from beneath her wings and slowly ventured out and began to imitate
their mom. Soon they all were pecking
away at the crumbles with great enthusiasm.
Eating!
Today, it got into the
sixties in the afternoon and Courtney and the Legbar Quints actually came off
the nest for a while. I’ve moved the
heat lamp down and have decided the key is to keep it as warm as I can in the
brooder coop until the weather warms up in a few weeks. It’s now a balmy 95 degrees under the lamp. For
now at least, things are going fantastically well and everybody is happy!
Kiss!
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