USPS outdid itself getting my 104 chicks (2 Surprise Packages) to me in northern Maine from MO in a scant two days. The tracking info online kept saying it was a 3-day Priority Mail shipment but I got it in less than 48 hours of receipt of the box by USPS. Cackle, of course, did not send me the email containing the tracking # until about 7 hours after I got the chicks.
All chicks and poults arrived alive and healthy in appearance and activity.
No ducks, alas, but I can deal with that.
That's the good news. I was not ready with the brooders. The box spent 8 hours in the bathtub with a heater running, and the little critters were all lively when released into the brooders. Even the turkeys found the water and food, although their suicidal tendencies are expressed in repeated attempts to lurch out of the brooder door every time it is opened.
I set up a Mama Heating Pad in the two brooders (the third did not get completely enclosed until this morning...required another trip to town for hardware cloth, because what I thought was half-inch by half-inch was one inch by two, and thus unsuitable). Occupants of the upper level had no problem discovering the benefits of MHP. The lower level tenants did not, because whenever I popped them under, they squirted back out and insisted on forming a chick mat at the other end of the brooder, near the food tray.
This morning, I found dead chicks, squashed in the mosh pits.
It was most likely the sheer volume of chicks in each brooder. I had planned on +-30 chicks in each 2' x 6' space and a 40% increase is, IMO, too many. Another 8 chicks have required warming up in a small infirmary I set up. I actually put all of the chicks that appeared dead under a towel on top of another heating pad. After 20 minutes, four of them were breathing! I discovered another three that were sluggish and felt cold in my hand and have been cycled to the infirmary. Three have recovered enough to, after administration of additional electrolytes and probiotics, be returned to the brooder. Two more are on the road to recovery.
The total losses so far are 17.
I have tentatively identified:
4 Royal Palm turkeys
2 Blue Slate turkeys (one has perished)
22 Polish, 8 of which are blue and 4 of which are white-topped black
5 EE
4 Turkens
Still unknown are:
12 black/charcoal with black legs and white head dots and wing tips
More than a dozen yellow chicks, some splashed with gray and some without distinguishing marks
14 chipmunks
2 gray and black Polish
I've looked through all of the Cackle vids (excepting the ducks, peafowl, guineas, bantams, feather-legged chickens and game fowl) and have come up empty. I'll post some pics after I eat something and tend to the chicks in the infirmary again. One of those recovering got chilled from falling into the waterer. I may dab its feathers straight with a warm washcloth and blow dry it.
Good thing I took two days off from work. I needed yesterday to finish their accommodations and get them settled, and today to clean up the mess.
