Cuteness OVERLOAD! Help! (Warning...REALLY cute pics! lol)

[4H kids and mom]

Wow. I am in cuteness heaven right now!

Ok, here's what happened from the begining.

We placed our order with our hatchery last week. They had to hold of on shipping until this week because they had the Cornish cross chicks in another 'bator (a week behind the others). No prob there. Gives me more time to set up for babies again! So I wait.

Well, I call them today to find out the exact day they'll be here, and they tell me first thing Saturday. Cool, I think. About an hour later our PO calls me saying they have a box of cheeps for me! I'm like "Whoa...what?!" So I go on down.

Now my order was supposed to be for 10 pullets and 10 Cornish. Here was a box of 10 pullets (according to the packing sheet)! All alive and peeping happily so I head home thinking what the heck? I set them up in the brooder I had ready, and called the hatchery.

Well, they have someone new helping out at the farm and the person saw my order for the 10 pullets, but didnt see the 10 Cornish we were waiting on! So they shipped out the pullets.

Well, thats all fine and dandy, but the hatchery owner doesnt like to ship less than 20 chicks for warming purposes. So now I'm like what do I do because I didnt want to have to pay for more pullets!

So, long story short, they're shipping out the Cornish tonight as planned to arrive here early Saturday, and they are THROWING IN another 10 pullets!

OMG! Cute? Yes! But what am I supposed to do with 30 chicks!? Plus the 5 Cornish I already have that are going on 2 weeks old, PLUS the 27 Ameraucanas that are 8 weeks old! O my Lord...thats 62 chicks! Yes, 15 of those are headed for the freezer, and 10 of the Ameraucana are for sale, and 3 are already sold....BUT that still leaves 34 (31 pullets and 3 roos) chickens!

Uh, HELP! Anyone want some babies? lol

Well, here's pics of the babies that came today. They are:

Black with white bottoms and white spots~ Barred Rocks
Deep Red~ Rhode Island Reds
Buff with stripes/heads of red~ Cinnamon Queens
All White~ Buff Orphingtons

 

[justusnak]

Awwwwwwwww....wookie at the wittle fuzzies!! Too cute! You are haveing great luck...well sorta...with that hatchery! I wish I was closer, I would take a few from ya...but Oh DH would be very upset...my " just 6 or 7 for eggs" has turned into just over 40 now..and 25 in the bator!

 

[cookinmom]

Those are so cute!!! Was it really only 8 weeks ago our babies looked like that??!!

 

[4H kids and mom]

lol I hear ya there! The good news on my side is that my DH knows the chicks keep me busy while he's away and he looks forward to loads of meat and eggs we've "grown" ourselves, so he's cool with "however many we have the room for". I'm not too worried about the pen size (we can always add on later if we need to), its the coop that may be too small.

Well, we made the wall expandable for a reason I suppose....lol

I dont think I could bare to part with many of them....

If I keep them all my total flock count would be 3 Ameraucana roos, and 31 pullets (thats 16 Ameraucanas, 5 Barred Rocks, 5 Cinnamon Queens, 2 Buff Orphingtons, and 3 Rhode Island Reds). Am I crazy?!?!

 

[CarriBrown]

The "butt" picture is priceless!!! Very cute babies. Hey, you hit the chicken lovers lottery!! 10 free pullet chickies?! I know I'm jealous...

 

[Simple Chick]

You are so brave to keep ordering chicks! I am so twitter pated about the 23 I bought 6 weeks ago - still trying to figure out the best way to care for them, get things set up properly, trying to figure out why they do the things they do!... I can't imagine cycling through a new bunch every few weeks! My husband would have my head on a platter! I commend you. You're a better person than me!

By the way, I grew up in central WI. Live in KS now, but beautiful WI will always be home!

 

[catballou24]

i'd take some off your hands if i lived near you! those are super cute!!! what hatchery did you order from?

 

[4H kids and mom]

I don't intend to keep ordering chicks. We ordered our chicks 8 weeks ago, and originally we had planned to send the extra boys to the freezer. Well, I've decided not to do that, and have sold a few of them, and have had offers on the others. So, we still wanted chicken in the freezer for the summer BBQs, so I ordered the Cornish meat birds from our hatchery, and we only wanted/needed 10 or so and the hatchery required a 20 bird minimum for delivery, so we added a few more pullets. They messed up and sent us the 10 pullets now, while we were waiting for the Cornish to hatch, so now they are sending me more of the same pullets AGAIN with the Cornish who will all get here tomorrow.

(Wow, THAT was a mouthful!)

Anywho, normally I wouldn't have ordered more. We were set with our flock of 27, with 12 of them being roos and us keeping 3 of those roos, left us with 15 pullets and 3 roos. Kinda high pullet-to-roo ratio, and we have/had only the blue/green egg layers so I went with ordering 10 brown and white egg layers (5 each) to increase the ration to 25/3. Still a little high, but I felt it would be do-able.

BUT now with the extra 10 pullets, we're at 35/3 which, yes, is an ideal ration, but WAY too many for us! So, we'll be rehoming some. I want to get roughly even amounts of each so I get around the same number (give or take) of each color eggs each day. Does that make sence? So I have some re-homing to do.... Anybody lookin for chicks? Hmm? Pretty chickies here! Get your chickies here! lol

Our coop and run AS IS can easily hold 24 adults. I plan to move the wall of the coop over about 4 feet and expand the pen by 5 feet to make room for just a few more.

I want to end up with roughly 8-10 blue/green egg layers, 8-10 brown egg layers, and 8-10 white egg layers, plus 3 roos for a total flock of 27-33 (MAX)....which is what we had and wanted in the first place! lol I hope my plans work.....

PS...We ordered these and the first batch from Sun Ray Chick Hatchery in IA. Nothing but great experiences so far, so I highly recommend them!

 

[wynedot55]

awwww those chickies are just to cute.now dont start panicing yet.your just at 62 chickies.when you hitt 100 then you can freak.ive got a 20 by 40 henhouse that i need to fill up.but cant right now b/c to meny irons in the fire.

 

[4H kids and mom]

now dont start panicing yet.your just at 62 chickies.when you hitt 100 then you can freak.

Yea, if I hit 100 then I can start packin! lol Hub would be the one to freak!

He's already a bit worried about all the babies, but he's also smart enough to know that I wont have a problem rehoming extra PULLETS lol