The Arrival

We got the call! Our chickens have arrived and are peeping it up at the Decatur Post Office. The postal worker seems to share my joy, and my husband Seth begrudgingly joins in on the pick up journey. What luck is our good friend Dave Vann is with us to document the pick up event 🙂

I was sincerely worried the peeps may be sickly from travel – they are only a day old for goodness sakes. I could tell they were in good spirits through the air holes in the package they arrived in, though – they peeped excitedly as we made the poor postal worker pose for our pick up pic. I mean, come on, chickens in the mail IS pretty exciting, right?!

Well we had to stop by the pet store on the way home as I still needed a lamp bracket for their heat lamp. I did a bunch of research and found that chicks need to be kept at a temperature between 90-95 degrees their first week. To ensure the correct temp, I also purchased a small thermometer to keep under the lamp – it shouldn’t be too cold or too hot, my research informed me. We did not open our peep box on the journey for fear they would jump out or something. I’m sure they were ready to get out of that box!!

I may have gone a bit overboard with the pictures, but I guess that shows how excited I was to meet my new peeps!

Once we finally arrived home, we opened the box and were delighted and surprised to find that our 4 chicks had somehow multiplied and turned into 5! We had what looked like tow of a certain kind, and 3 that looked totally different. I noticed that the two that looked the same had green legbands on, and sure enough on the box there was a key stating the green bands are our Barnevelders. The key also let us know that the other two are the Easter Eggers, although we aren’t sure which two are, or if all 3 are Easter Eggers, since we have a surprise gal. We assume all 3 are Easter Eggers, as apparently it’s not really a breed per se but just a category of hen that lays colored eggs, so they can look very different in feather.

I read about this thing called “Chicken Math” and just dismissed it, but now I get it…you always end up with more chickens than you originally planned!  Thank you Mayer Hatchery for the extra peep!

Aren’t they adorable!! We wanted to get them fed and watered ASAP after their long journey from Ohio to ATL, and so as soon as the box was opened we put them in their new home-for-now, an old aquarium we set up for their purpose.

We gave them a little water dish and I dutifully dunked each peep-beak into the water so they knew it was there (Seth, my husband, thought it was some sort of peep torture, but I assured him that it was necessary, I think). The Hatchery included a warming packet in their box to keep them warm on their journey, but I could tell the poor babes were cold, so we immediately set up their heat lamp. At first we thought the lamp was broken, but then realized we had to turn it on….

At last, warm peeps with food (some sort of medicated peep formula I got on Amazon – they seem to like it).

Here are some pics of us enjoying peephood!