Chickinsanity

Cluckin4Vets

Hatching
Jun 25, 2016
1
0
7
Southern Oregon
Greetings everyone,

We have a 15 acre property a family member recently started renting and our family is working together to try to buy it. The Homestead farm is a mountain side 4 acre farm with an 11 acre big pasture across the road. It was formerly occupied by a homesteading family with tons of poultry and sheep and they moved their flocks to a 150 acre property in Idaho. Having a barn and 5 coups on the property we knew we wanted to do something special. It is in the picturesque mountains of southern Oregon. We decided that since I am myself a 100% service connected disabled veteran and I do a lot of various projects to help other vets especially the ones with PTSD and Depression issues that we would create a serenity farm.

Serenity Homestead Farm is the name we chose. We will be raising chickens, ducks, turkeys, and sheep. we hope in the future to get phesants, geese, and other uncommon foul in our area. the concept is that once the farm is viable IE animals are old enough, we will bring veterans and their families out to the farm at no charge to interact with the animals. It has been proven that interacting with farm animals (you dont own or are responsible to care for) is a calming experience and entices certain parts of the brain to increase the dopamine output.

Our friends at Agguire Family Farms graciously gave us a bunch of chicken, turkey and quail eggs and use of some incubators to start our flock with. subsequently we emailed Cackle Hatchery and let them know about what we are doing and that it is completely volunteer and free to the veterans. Very Very Generously Jeff an Owner and descendant of the man that started Cackle hatchery in the 1930s tasked a woman named Libby with helping us out. Cackle Hatchery is VERY Pro Veteran and Patriotic. We had discussed the donation of cackles Surprise box which is $65.95 and typically contains between 52-54 chicks. Well unbeknownst to us Jeff cave Libby NO LIMIT on what she could pack or how many she could ship... now comes the Chickinsanity part.... We went to the post office to pick up our chicks yesterday. When the lady came out of the post office warehouse with the package it was not 1 surprise box, but 2!!! OMG what did Libby do??? Well she did inform us that it would in no way be a standard surprise box, Boy was she right!!! a large majority of the birds are either endangered breeds at various levels or rare breeds. it included a total of 114 birds, 12 ducks and at least 6 turkeys. we are still trying to figure them all out. she even included bantams which is not normal because of the fact they have to be in seperate brooders from the regular size birds. but we had plenty of lights and just had to go get some more feeders and waterers.

It was most deffinatly a huge surprise and Libby went way over the top on her selections. we got the birds at 5:30 pm and we up well past 2am trying to figure out what all we had. it was a lot of fun and our 12 yr old daughter which was the only one of the 5 we have happend to be home and was doing everything she could to be the first to identify different breeds. things are crazy in the house and very chirpy. we are learning as fast as we can. we look forward to learning from you all and ultimatly making veterans and their families happy and give them a neat experience. thanks for reading and thanks to Cackle Hatchery and Agguire Family Farms.

The Hicks Family
Serenity Homestead Farm
 
Hi and welcome to BYC - glad that you have joined us and thanks for such an interesting introduction. It seems that Libby has come up trumps for you! I wish you the best of luck with your plans - a very noble cause.

You'll find lots of info in the Learning Centre https://www.backyardchickens.com/atype/1/Learning_Center, and if you have a specific topic in mind, just type it in the search box - there's a wealth of information on past and present threads.

You may wish to consider joining your state thread as it will put you in touch with other BYC members in your area - https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/26/where-am-i-where-are-you

All the best
CT
 
Hi, welcome to BYC. I would love to visit Oregon someday, it looks like a very beautiful state to live in. I also love the name you chose for your farm, I'm sure it's quite fitting - hope you post some pictures in the future! Anyway, I'll see you around :)
 

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