On a cold spring morning in March of 2011, the day old baby chicks my husband and I purchased from a hatchery in the Midwest (Murray McMurray Hatchery) arrived at our local post office.
My husband received a phone call bright and early in the morning from an annoyed postmaster that there were some very noisy chicks that needed to be picked up as soon as possible. Over the phone, my husband could hear the peeps in the background and decided to drop everything to rush to get our very first batch of Cochin bantam chicks.
I had to drive into a satellite office for work that day, so I missed the grand entrance of these powder puffs of sweet peeping joy. When I arrived home that day, the jacuzzi tub in the downstairs guest bathroom was fully transformed into a baby chick nursery.
This began the adventure of raising twenty-eight chicks that were less than two days old.
I was so excited to see the chicks and spent most of the evening on that first night sitting on the bathroom floor watching them learn to eat and drink. They were adorable and I felt like a proud mother hen as I watched them doze off to sleep under the heat lamp. They were perfect in my eyes and so cute, I just knew they would be a great addition to our lives.
I awoke from that first night as a surrogate mommy at the ungodly hour of two in the morning when the cacophony of peeping baby chicks bled through the walls to the upstairs master bedroom. Just like human babies, these little guys did not sleep through the night. When one started peeping, the remainder joined in. There would be no uninterrupted sleep for many nights to come.
As the chicks grew older, we moved them from the tub to the screen enclosure of the back patio. It was like a huge aviary for them and they had a great time playing in the security of a closed in play-pen.
When they were a couple of months old, we moved them to a ten by ten fenced dog pen with a cover. They were placed right next to the screened in patio for easy monitoring. After a few months when the chicken coop was completed, the now adolescent chicks were moved into their permanent home.
The move was not without casualties. Just prior to moving them to their permanent abode, a hawk swooped down upon one that had escaped the from the dog pen. The hawk had his first taste of baby chick and after that would try to get into the cage every chance he could.
During the next few weeks, three chicks were lost to the hawk and the count remaining stayed at twenty-five through their first year of life.
Within three to four months, the first egg was laid by one of the hens, it was about the size of a golf ball. I was ecstatic about the prospects of having fresh from the farm eggs for breakfast. But, it took several more weeks for the other hens to start laying so having their eggs for breakfast had to wait.
Once I had the first bite of my hand-raised, free-range, organic eggs, I was in heaven. The eggs were hands-down the very best I had ever tasted. Soon there was an over abundance of eggs and family and friends were the welcome recipients of the excess.
To this day we have anywhere from fifteen to thirty hens to keep us in fresh eggs. I have to admit, each time I eat a store bought egg, I can really taste the difference in flavor and texture between home-grown and commercial eggs.
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