I could hardly sleep on Monday night… we had gotten an email that our meat chicks were on their way! That they should be delivered either Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning. Since we are in the same area code of the hatchery, I suspected it would be Tuesday. And sure enough, at 8 o’clock in the morning, Deb, our mail lady called to say we had a noisy box to come and pick up! Yeah!

And we got it home and opened it up… 26 little pretty chicks in a box! They sent one extra.. a fancy one we call Spot. I guess he’s a freebie in case someone doesn’t make it but we counted and we had all live chicks, ready to get some feed and water in them!

(Spot is called Spot because, ah, he has a big spot on his rump!)

You have to show them where to drink and what to drink… one at a time… take them from the box, dunk them a bit and then let them lift up their little heads and gargle the water down… it’s so sweet. They all figgered it out pretty quickly for sure.

We had such a hoot watching the little guys explore their new home. We put down paper towels for the first couple days, so that they can learn what food is, and not eat the shavings. I know some folks put them straight on shavings, and well, their box had some fine shavings in the bottom for them, but we thought we would err on the side of over-protectiveness, at least for the first 24 or 36 hours.

I’m finding myself watching these little fluffs and considering the fact that in two months, I will pay a company to slaughter them for my family’s table. It’s the harsh reality, these are not laying hens or pets, in fact, they are breed to die. Never to breed, not able to really live much past 6 months without health issues. If I let them loose, to go wild, they would be killed pretty quick by predators. Face it, in the whole scheme of the food chain, pretty much everything is in line to eat chickens. We’d be at a loss without the wonderful versatile chicken. I wonder why we don’t have Pork Nuggets or oh, Beef Salad… chickens are just good at feeding us, either with their eggs, or, ah with themselves!

Hmmm…. Pork Nuggets. I could be on to something there…

After they drank and feasted at our little chick starter buffet, they all went and huddled under the heat lamp for a little mass chickie cuddle huddle. I think they were a little chilly from the whole mail system escort and needed a little down time. We covered up the brooder with the wire top and a tablecloth to help warm up the area for awhile and give them a little quiet. Of course, we couldn’t help but keep peeking in on them, making sure the temperature got up nicely to about 90 degrees.

Chicken salad… chicken nuggets… BBQ chicken…. roast chicken… chicken sandwiches… chicken soup… chicken ala king… chicken pot pie… oh my…

Let’s face it, we all love chicken. Well, except my friend Tim. He’s kinda sick of chicken lately. But aside from Tim, most of the world eats a whole lot of chicken. It’s why chicken farming is a pretty lucrative farm business. I mean, heck, these little dudes will be ready to eat in like 2 months! 2 months! Even a hog takes at least 6 months and a steer is like a good year or 18 months to get to a decent weight for “finishing”.

Finishing. Like they won a race or a marathon or something… look! Daisey the cow is finishing her life! She’s finished! Yeah! I just guess that finishing sounds better than slaughter. Slaughter always makes me think of those creepy movies with Jason and a lot of blood and screaming… I really would rather that my food does not go through something like that… I would rather it was a quick, simple process without a lot of stress and pain. That would be good. I want our little meat chickies to have a wonderful and happy little chicken life and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure they enjoy donuts and get to play in the grass and sunshine and get to take naps in the cool summer breezes and eat lots of good chicken crumbles and mash and bugs too. I plan on getting them little buckets of crickets and little worms as treats so they can hunt them and all. And they will have sand to scratch in and take dust baths, and they will get strong branches to roost on and hop from and just all in all, enjoy their short little lives.

They could have easily ended up in a factory farm, 20,000 birds in a building, never really seeing the daylight, de-beaked and pumped full of antibiotics and growth chemicals and living and breathing in feces all day long. Luck of the draw I suppose.

I had a chicken, bacon and swiss sandwich from Arby’s tonight and it was pretty tasty. I’m pretty sure that chicken didn’t come from some hippy chick homesteader back in the woods. I’m also pretty sure that I’m not going to be able to avoid eating commercial chicken in my life without a pretty major attempt not to. But if I can eat that factory farmed chicken and enjoy it, even knowing how it is created, then I sure think that I can eat my own birds that I KNOW had a super decent little chicken life… even if it wasn’t super long, here at our little homestead. And I have heard from folks that the local processors, they are just a family, with a little business and they take appointments to “finish” your poultry. It’s not some huge slaughter house or some commercial scary processing plant. It’s just a little building with a giant white chicken out front. I wonder if the chosen poultry look at that giant bird and consider wow…. Chicken God. Probably not.

I love watching them drink… it’s like they are all at the water alter, drinking and giving thanks to the big water bottle that sustains them. Haha… I really like it when they peck at the bubbles that gurgle up. They are so sweet and innocent little things. I hope we can be good caretakers of them on this little bit of dirt we call home.

Look! This little one already has wing feathers sprouting! Oh my, they are growing fast already!!! Time will fly for sure!