We were still in bed on Thursday morning when we got the phone call. Our 100 chicks had arrived at the post office!
Andy bolted down the steps and drove out the lane to pick them up.
I looked at the clock – 6:30 AM.
In between flipping pancakes for breakfast, I made a fire in the wood stove to take the chill off and started the generator so the heat lamp would run.
The plan was to keep the chicks in a pen in our living room until they were less fragile and could stand the freezing nighttime temperatures outside. I wasn’t sure what it would be like, but I was dubious about having that many birds in our already-full cabin.
Andy got back just as I finished getting breakfast ready. None of the children were awake yet, so we worked together to dip the chicks’ beaks in water as we put them into their new pen.
But after going without water for four days (the chicks had shipped on Monday and miraculously survived transport), they were extremely thirsty and in their haste to get more water they kept piling into the bowls of water we had provided.
Soon all the chicks were in their pen, but they were also all wet and began peeping loudly in distress.
I had gotten the children up by this time, but breakfast was forgotten in the excitement of having chicks in the living room. Andy rushed in and out, bringing in boards and hanging up a second heat lamp, even while the wet and bedraggled fowl crowded themselves on top of each other trying to get warm.
Finally the crises seemed to be calming down a bit, and Andy left for work, grabbing his lunch on the way out the door.
I looked around in dismay. I had 100 chicks to keep alive until he returned that afternoon. I watched over my brood carefully that first day, giving them more water regularly and putting the sluggish ones in their own box beneath the heat lamp. Mentally I calculated how soon we could feasibly move them out.
To my surprise, as long as I gave them new sawdust a couple times a day, they didn’t stink much, and if we kept them well supplied with food and water, the peeping was only mildly annoying.
It’s been almost a week since that day and the chicks are still in the house, growing bigger and stronger every day. I watch them eagerly, urging them on, longing for the day when I will have my living room back.
Even though it has not been as bad as I thought it would be, I’m ready to have the house back to ourselves.
