Do you ever have those days where you really just wanna crawl right back in bed and try again tomorrow? Yesterday was one of those days.
We ordered a new breed of chick a few weeks ago (Mystic Onyx) and a couple more of a breed we already have (Cinnamon Queen). I have been obsessively stalking my email, waiting for that “Your Chicks Have Shipped” email. (Which I do every time because I am the resident crazy chicken lady. 😁)
I got the email on Wednesday evening that the babies had hatched and had been shipped. They should arrive within 72 hours max, but most likely in 24 to 48.
I was super excited and checked tracking morning and night. Friday afternoon, I realized tracking had stopped updating. Last scan had been as they left Detroit, MI that morning.
Friday night came and no tracking update. Saturday morning, no update. I’m not sure about your post office, but ours stops getting mail by a certain time of morning.
There had been no chicks delivered by the last mail run.
Chickens are strange, resilient little creatures. As they are forming in the egg, some really cool things are happening – one of which makes shipping just hatched chicks possible.
Each egg has a similar makeup no matter the species that lays them – a brittle shell protects a gloopy inner of the familiar ‘yolk’ and ‘white’. Fpr chickens, the yolk is released as the hen ovulates; it can then be fertilised, and continues to travel through the hen’s reproductive tract. The white of the egg is comprised of various different layers of albumin, structural fibres and membrane, which surround the yolk as it travels through. Finally, the eggs are ‘shelled’ and about 24 hours later, a protective liquid barrier is applied to stop bacteria from entering the egg and within moments the egg is laid.
The fertilised yolk contains all of the genetic information needed to create a newborn chick. To support the chick’s development, eggs are high in fat and protein – the more fat in the yolk, the darker the colour.
Once the correct conditions are met for hatching, an embryo starts to form to the side of the yolk. The baby chick then incubates for roughly 20 days before hatching. But what happens right before hatch is the amazing part that allows a chick to be shipped.
On day 18 of incubation, the process of the embryo absorbing the yolk of the egg into its stomach begins. This makes it possible for hatching chicks to survive for 48 hours to 72 hours without food or water after it’s hatched – they live off the yolk!
So for those still following the shipping nightmare, the babies hatched on Wednesday – 72 hours later is Saturday. Mail doesn’t run on Sundays and the post offices aren’t open.
Saturday afternoon, no call from the post office. Tracking hadn’t updated. I was getting frantic. I couldn’t reach anyone about these chicks. They seem to have been lost in transit. I called the hatchery and left a message for them almost in tears.
Saturday night tracking updated. They would be late arriving on Saturday. Sunday morning, it updated again but said the same thing. Arriving late on Sunday.
This was going on 96 hours. I had given up hope of any survivors.
Early Monday morning, tracking updated that they had arrived in the next town over.
At 730am, they were in transit to our local post office.
I saw it just after I put Feral Son on the bus. They open at 8 and I just waited impatiently, phone in hand, for that call. And at 8:02am, the call came in.
Now, I am not the world’s safest or slowest driver. I will be the first to admit this. Add to it that it was first thing in the morning, I had been in a high stress state for going on 3 days, there were lives at stake (if by some miracle any had survived), and our local post office is down a long country road with little traffic…. I made it to the post office in record time.
Stomach churning, I walked in and told them I was there to pick up chicks. I had spoke with them Saturday morning, so they were aware of the situation.
The girl walked into the back, opened a door and picked up a box off a table. As she lifted it, we heard a noise.
Chirping!
There were babies still alive in the box!
As soon as she set it on the counter, I immediately started cutting off the securing bands and the labels and everything else holding the lid on. Inside, there were 7 living babies.
I have absolutely no idea how they survived. But I was so relieved that they had!
Another speed racer trip home and I very quickly through together an inside brooder to separate these living but weak chicks from our other babies that they were supposed to be rooming with.
As we were moving them into this brooder, we discovered 2 more living babies that I had missed at the post office. Within an hour, we had lost 4 more. They were just too far gone to save. They were likely in shock, weak, starving, and dehydrated.
By this morning, we are down to 3 survivors, one of which I’m not super confident about.
The hatchery is reshipping the entire order, earlier in the week this time. So fingers crossed they arrive on time. Hopefully this was just a horrible one off experience. In all the orders of chicks we have gotten over the years, this has been the only time this has happened.
When you are raising animals, loss is expected. On shipping chicks, there is an expected 1 to 2% loss simply because they are jostled around, go through multiple temperature changes, are exposed to various pathogens, and simply because travel is stressful. Even going to a local farmer to buy chicks, the trip home can be too stressful for them.
I never expected a loss this large, however. And I hope that I never do again.
RIP to the little souls we lost… 😭😭
**Update: We lost the little one I was worried about this afternoon. The remaining 2 are doing FANTASTIC though and are in need of warrior girl names. What do you got for us???
