Chickens in the House

Our forty three new chicks arrived today. After a very confusing trip to the east dock of the Omaha post office, where I wound my way through the nearly empty building led by the sound of peeping (and my new post office friend Marsha), I was able to bring home our newest members of the farm. We have 15 Arucauna/Americana mixes, and 9 each of Red Stars, Black Stars, and Pearl White Leghorns. For those of you mathematicians, yes, we received an extra. Thank you Murray McMurray. Now the challenge is going to be keeping these chicks warm. We have the hottest bulbs for our heat lamps and are monitoring the ground temperature with a thermometer. Baby chicks need an environment of 95 degrees. With the outside temperature reading a balmy 23 (it went down one degree as I wrote this), we have our work cut out for us. I pray that we do not have to convert the bathroom into a brooder--although it wouldn't be the first time. Now it looks like we have our chicks to keep us busy until our seed planting begins.