I got chores done and took RL to pre-school while for the second day in a row waited on a call from Valley Ag to pick up my chicks.
I came home and had breakfast before calling to see what was up. They said the chicks were on their way and would be here late morning / early afternoon.
So we decided to go run all our errands this morning. Hubbie, IR and I climbed into hubbie's truck and made the dump / recycle stop, Aldi to pick up baking supplies and groceries and Sam's Club. We made it home just in time for lunch. We thought IR would have taken a nap riding around but she doesn't seem to be sleepy at all.
After lunch we all went outside to start getting the garden ready for planting. As soon as we got out there my phone rang with the call that the chicks were ready for pick-up.
IR was acting sleepy so hubbie stayed here to try and get her to sleep while I went after the chicks.
Valley Ag is in Mills River about a 20 minute drive from here.
I got a surprise when I went in to get the chicks. The 6 Golden Sexlinks were all alone in a large tub and were certainly not day old chicks. I found out they had been there for 2 weeks and they had been keeping them for me until the Araucanas got here. The Araucanas were day old chicks.
There was actually 7 of the Sexlinks so I got them all for the price of 6 which was nice but this presents a problem for me when I get home because there is too much size difference to put them together.
I ran different things over and over in my mind all the way home and finally decided on a plan that would move a setting Silkie from another sealed brooder box into a more open brooder box and put the bigger chicks in the sealed box and still put the 6 day old chicks in with the red silkie that has been sitting on 1 egg waiting on these chicks to make hers.
IR had refused to take a nap so when I got home she and hubbie were playing outside. IR is not a chicken fan not even when they are these cute little fuzz balls. She quickly closed the box top so they couldn't get to her !!!
Susie was glad to get the cakes as she is leaving for Florida tomorrow.
Back home I put the small chicks in with the red silkie setter and was glad to see them all snuggle under her warm feathers. The one egg hasn't hatched and she is still determined to hatch that one egg so she didn't move off the nest. The chicks just snuggled around her.
I successfully got the while setting silkie moved from the other sealed brooder box and got it set up with a light for these older chicks. They are really skittish right now.
As I checked on the little ones I found them all huddled away from the mama hen so I plugged the light I already had in there on for them some heat until they learn to stay under the mama hen.
That is the hard part about getting incubator chicks to stay under a hen. They seem to loose that instinct and some get it back but some never do. I'll provide these a heat lamp until I can see if they will start getting under the hen or not and to see if she will leave that 1 egg to take care of these 6 chicks or not.
IR helped hubbie reweave some of our grape vines.
Daughter came to pick her up and they went over to a friends house to pick out some plants for their yard.
Hubbie got the tractor out and disc the garden one more time to break up most of the dirt clods. It sure looks better than the first time he disc it.
We planted potatoes with help from Rosie and also got our onions, lettuce, spinach, arugula and Kale greens planted today.
Spring garden pretty much done. I may try to find some radish and kolrabi seeds to plant as these are a couple of my early garden favorites.
We got the chores done and when I looked up these angry looking clouds were forming so I was glad to get inside for the evening.
Thankful for the wonderful blessings of this day and the blessing of being able to plant these small seeds and reap a bountiful harvest of fresh food from them.
God Bless and Good Night
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