Peeps Galore

Drove down to Hoovers this morning and picked up the broiler chicks – 102 of them.

Box-o-chicks

When I get chicks home I take them out of the box one-by-one, counting as I go, and dip each one’s beak in water to get it started. Within minutes they’re running around as if, well, as if the sky is falling. And they are loud! Between the running about and the constant, loud cheeping it’s like a chick enactment of the floor of the NYSE.

As I predicted, I’m obsessively checking on them every hour. Good thing, too. Just now – after only one hour – I found two that somehow had half their bodies in the drinking water, wet and cold and shivering. Several others were also partially wet and shivering. Chicks do not handle cold and wet well at all. I took the two worst ones and put them under the lamp in the pullets’ brooder where they’ll have less competition for the heat. At this point I don’t know if they’ll make it or not. The others I moved underneath the lamp in their own brooder to warm up again.

Broilers are one of the few types of livestock where the term hybrid vigor doesn’t seem to apply. Usually crossbred animals (and vegetables, for that matter) are heartier than purebred stock, less prone to illness and disease. Cornish Cross broilers, on the other hand, are delicate. They’ll die over the littlest thing. Too hot, too cold, too drafty, too wet, too dry, not enough feed, too much feed. Things really have to be just right for them.

So for the rest of today – and probably tomorrow, too – I’ll be adjusting the height of the brooder lamps, checking feed and water levels, and just observing for signs of trouble.

Bellied up to the bar