Anyone see Martha Stewarts show featuring her MM chicks?

[Kelly FG]

Of course the president of MM hatchery HAND DELIVERED them to her, she didn't need to wait for the PO like the rest of us.
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal...&lnc=4ef2dc5bfca40110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD

 

[EweSheep]

No wonder McMurray is getting their eggs from Ideal

Kudos to Martha and her chicklets!

 

[joanm]

I wonder what her coop looks like, and if she cleans it herself...

I just can't see her cleaning chicken poop and calling it "A Good Thing"

 

[MandyH]

I saw that last week and meant to post, just too busy lately. My dh was home when it aired and he cracked up when the head honcho came to Martha's WITH the chicks in hand. How bout all those custom built little chicken houses too. I told dh I wish our poor chicks could live that high on the hog.

 

[kelly]

196 chickens! I could not imagine feeding that many. And can you imagine gathering and cleaning all those eggs! Yea right shes gonna do the work! LOL

Kelly

 

[tiffanyh]

I dont get it.....???? McMurray delivered them, but the eggs where purchased from IDEAL??

Whats up with that?

 

[SunChick]

Quote:

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
There's more to it than that. She a long time customer. Here's an article I found. I can't link to it for some reason so I had to copy from google's cache. I always wondered if the hatcheries kept their own flocks or if they made agreements with local farms to keep breeder stock. According to the article the eggs are supplied from family farms around the area. Another article I read says that MM hatches 100,000 chicks every Friday during the buy season.

Hatchery to be featured on Martha Stewart show Tuesday

By Lori Berglund — Daily Freeman-Journal Editor



In the above photo, former Webster City Mayor Bud Wood hand-delivered a big box of baby chicks to long-time McMurray Hatchery customer Martha Stewart earlier this summer.
These chicks are in demand.

The founder of the company sold them out of the back door of a bank that closed up one day during the Great Depression. He decided to make a living selling chicks instead.

The next generation took advantage of the strength of America’s rail industry at the time and shipped chicks via rail everywhere from the Smoky Mountains to the Rockies and beyond.

The following generation took to the skies, utilizing air mail to serve customers from ocean to ocean.

And the newest president of McMurray Hatchery — the first one not named McMurray — he recently hand-carried a box of 200 chirping day-old chicks through New York’s LaGuardia International Airport.

Yes, these chicks are in demand.

Bud Wood, co-owner of McMurray Hatchery with Murray McMurray and Mike Lubbers, made that special delivery this summer for one of the hatchery’s long-time customers. On Tuesday, television viewers can get a look at that special delivery when Wood appears on the Martha Stewart Show.

Martha knows chickens.

In fact, Martha Stewart knew of McMurray Hatchery before most of America knew of Martha Stewart. She first began ordering from the business in the 1970s and has remained a loyal customer. About 10 years ago, she even sent a film crew to Webster City to learn more about the business that hatched the chicks, who grew into the hens, who provided the colorful blue and brown eggs that viewers have regularly seen Martha crack to whip up a dish sure to delight.

Only the best for Martha.

And that’s what she gets from the breeding stock cared for on a number of small family farms right here in Hamilton and surrounding counties that work with McMurray Hatchery.



A call from Martha

With Stewart’s previous interest in the hatchery, Wood almost wasn’t even surprised when he received a personal call from her last spring talking about an order she planned to place. After selling her well-known Turkey Hill home four years ago, Stewart had been without a laying flock while her new home, up the Hudson River Valley at Bedford, was being built. She had three new chicken coops and was looking forward to filling them.

In a subsequent call from a producer of the Martha Stewart Show, Wood was asked if he would personally deliver the chicks Stewart planned to order. Wood’s visit with Stewart would be filmed and edited to be included in a segment on the new season of her TV show.

“That’d be great,” Wood said, but his mind was already reeling with the logistics of how to accomplish it.

“We worried a little bit because it was getting to be the first or second week of July and it was hot. The airlines have a restriction that you can’t ship if it’s over 85 degrees,” he explained.

Wood contacted airline officials and explained that chicks can fly quite safely at higher temperatures.

“They hatch at 99 degrees, so 85 is no problem,” Wood said.

Airlines officials eventually agreed, as long as Wood provided a veterinarian’s written approval, which was provided by Dr. Richard Stribe in Webster City.

"That kind of calmed everybody down," Wood said.

A second big concern is that the hatchery’s season wraps up in July and the focus moves on to hatching out chicks who will become the next season’s breeding stock.

“We were producing breeders for ourselves so we wanted to make sure everything was available,” Wood added.

But then, McMurray Hatchery has been taking care of customers — including several other celebrities — since 1917, and so all was finally well and Stewart's order was prepared one Saturday in July.



Ready to go — almost

"We got them all boxed up and I took them home because I was leaving early Sunday morning," Wood recalled.

It was a very warm night and Wood put the big box of chicks in his garage, with the door slightly open to provide air circulation, for the night. The only nervous one left was his wife, Julie.

"Julie was panicked that something was going to happen to them," Wood recalled.

After all, they do live in a rural area and hungry raccoons would have no problem sniffing out a box of chicks and turning them into a midnight snack.

Wood closed the door on the garage and he and his wife both slept better.

After months of preparation, Wood and the chicks were ready for the flight to New York City, but when they arrived at the Des Moines Airport Sunday morning, a man carrying a big box of chicks did cause a little attention.

"The first thing the lady at the counter said is, 'We don't take chickens,'" Wood recalled.

"I said, 'Yes, you do; you need to check with your supervisor.'"

And, finally, after several calls and a change from shipping the chicks as baggage to air cargo, all was well and Wood and the chicks were off to New York. Upon landing at LaGuardia, Wood waited for the box of chicks to come off the conveyor belt, but they never appeared. After a check with the help desk, he was redirected to the air cargo area, where a chirping box awaited him.

"The birds were sitting there and they were all in good shape," he noted.



A farm-style welcome

By now it was early Sunday afternoon and Wood had met his escort, who drive him about an hour out of the city, up the Hudson River Valley, to Stewart's home.

And there, after all the hassles of getting 200 chicks half-way across the country safely, he was greeted by a friendly face on a farmhouse porch.

"Hi Bud, how are you?" Stewart called as she walked out the back porch of her restored farmhouse at Bedford.

The guard at the security gate had told Wood and his driver that Stewart wanted to see him right away and she, herself, made him feel welcome from the start.

Dressed casually, Stewart came out and couldn't wait to get a peek inside the box of day-old fluffy chicks.

"She was just finishing dinner with friends and they all wanted to look at the birds," Wood said.

It was almost as if he had just arrived to visit neighbors.

"It was kind of a casual dinner. They were eating in the kitchen. You could tell it was an old farmhouse, but it looked very much like Martha Stewart," Wood said of the home that, while beautiful, was not at all pretentious. He was almost more amazed at the granite horse barns and all the amenities that Stewart had provided for her animals at her new farm.



Knowledge of agriculture

The farm includes three new chicken coops and an additional coop for turkeys. In that coop she was already raising a tom and four hens. The turkeys were a colorful breed and, asked if they were for pleasure or breeding, Stewart gave an answer sure to please any Iowa livestock producer's heart:

"Things here at the farm are for eating. These will be Thanksgiving dinner," Stewart said of the turkeys.

With the chickens, however, she focused more on laying stock than broilers, according to Wood.

"She did a very good job of ordering," Wood said of the mix of breeds chosen by Stewart herself. She focused primarily on brown egg layers, including the Cuckoo Marans she helped create a bit of a rush on by talking on air about the very dark chocolate brown eggs they lay. And, as always, she ordered some of the Araucanas, which lay shades of blue and green eggs.

While Stewart's new coops will give the flock plenty of room to grow, for that first night they were placed all in one coop, as it provided more than ample space for 200 chicks.

"They were beautiful coops. She did a nice job. I could have them for a summer cottage," Wood said.

After the chicks had been put to bed, Stewart asked Wood back to the house, where he was welcomed inside for Sunday left-overs of Chinese food. Wood's driver, and a producer of the show who had also come out to the farm, joined them around the kitchen table as they enjoyed the dinner before being driven to a hotel for the evening.

Filming began early the following morning and continued for several hours.

"It was pretty much Martha and I having a conversation about birds," Wood recalled.

They talked about such things as how it is that they can travel so far safely, how to care for them as they grow, and general poultry issues.



Be sure to tune in

Of course, the best way to learn about Wood's conversation with Martha Stewart is to tune in Tuesday afternoon. The show is scheduled to air at 3 p.m. on Channel 5.

Not bad for a sideline business that started way back in 1917. Trading a closed-up bank for the chicken business wasn’t such a bad idea.



Contact Lori Berglund at [email protected]

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

I saw it.
Nice piece --- except for the part in the studio.
One crate was marked 'Porcelain' and that's what she called the young bird --- just 'Porcelain'.
I'm guessing it was a D'uccle?

edited to add:
I noticed there was newspaper spread in the brooder-house with a bit of shavings on top. Somebody email Martha and tell her her chicks might have gotten spraddle-leg.

edited again to add:
MMcM doesn't have Araucanas. They have Easter Eggers.
Martha has shown her pics of blue / green egg laying Easter Eggers and called them Araucanas.

That's all, I think

Lisa

 

[Smoky73]

.

edited again to add:
MMcM doesn't have Araucanas. They have Easter Eggers.
Martha has shown her pics of blue / green egg laying Easter Eggers and called them Araucanas.

Yeah, but, that is how McMurray advertizes them Araucanas/Americanas they dont call them easter eggers in the catalog. Martha is just another victim of the lies the hatcheries are perpetuating.​