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Thursday, March 20, 2008

HOT CHICKS

The chicks arrived today in a cardboard box. There are 50 in all – each about the size of a child's hand.

For the next few weeks, their home will be a small room in the back of the tool shed, which doubles as a brooder. My role in promoting their survival will be to help keep the brooder at about 95 degrees, the temperature the chicks like it. This will include stoking the coal furnace at 9 p.m. before I go to bed, and hoping they don't freeze before I return to stoke it again the next morning. When so many chicks are depending on you, it makes it difficult to justify oversleeping that alarm clock.


No lambs yet. But they should be showing up any day now, too. And unlike the chicks, they won't be coming from the Post Office. They'll be born in the sheep barn.