I open the mailbox and oh… there it is! Nothing perks me up from the winter blues more than getting the McMurray Hatchery chick catalog or a garden/seed catalog. I spend hours pouring through the pages of the catalogs and planning and plotting where I can add more chickens or growing space! I really don’t need any more birds in my flock but that will not deter me from adding at least 4-5 more this season out of our incubator. The first time I purchased chicks I ordered 50 meat birds and 50 Leghorn layers figuring I would kill at least half, being a newbie at this. Well everyone lived, including the bonus chick from McMurray Hatchery and I used some of the birds for barter for other stuff or services we needed.
The firststep to chicks is to make sure you have a secure coop for the new birds and enough space for the number of birds in your flock. Have the outside coop ready before you get your new chicks. They will be inside your home for several weeks and no matter how clean you try to keep the wood shavings the plain truth is that they stink after a while. Do your homework and read up on different breeds. Do you want layers, meat birds, or dual-purpose birds? What birds are best for your climate? I highly recommend two books from Storey Publishers: Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens and Storey’s Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds. Check out other homesteading books from Storey Publishers. Many of their books occupy space on our bookshelves.
ACQUIRING CHICKS
Chicks can be purchased at local feed stores, ordered from a hatchery to arrive by mail, incubated at home or purchased from a local breeder. Our big box feed store has chicks very early in the season as they are a southern based store and still have not gotten the idea that little chicks have no business being in Maine in February or March. Decide when you want to get the little cuties and start some preparations. We usually try to have chicks arrive by mail or incubator in the beginning of May in our northern clime. If they have been ordered from the hatchery and are arriving by mail I guarantee it will be cold and frosty that week.
McMurray is a great source for birds and I have never experienced any issues with their chicks and their customer service is excellent. I highly recommend them. They will e-mail or text message you when the chicks are mailed and you can track them across the country to your local post office. I am a worried mother the whole time they are in transport.
Our post office, which is located in another town, will call me at 6 a.m. to come get my new babies as they take them off the delivery truck. I have walked into the post office on days when hundreds of chicks have been delivered and you can hear…