Before I tell the story about our April snow storm and the arrival of our first batch of chicks, and subsequent power outage, I want to announce our first annual Hog Harvest Sale during the month of April. If you’ve never tried our pork, this is a great way to try some of our popular items. If you’re looking to fill your freezer at some of the best prices we’ll be offering all year, now is the perfect time.
I’ll be sharing more about our pigs, our pork products, and highlighting recipes all month long.
All in one day
Lovett has been waiting for this week for months now. When will the baby chicks be here again? She asks almost every day. As the weeks and days got closer, the anticipation grew. Our hatchery (Freedom Ranger Hatchery in PA) ships our day-old chicks on Mondays and they arrive at our local post office on Wednesday mornings. It just so happened that Tuesday evening Lewis and Lovett had a sleepover at Nana and Gampy’s house, which is one of the many treasured gifts, for parents and children alike, of having grandparents in the same town.
Despite breakfast in a different house, Lewis and Lovett ate, packed their bags and were ready and waiting to be picked up and head to the post office with us to load up the first batch of chicks. There is nothing quite like the sound of 460 baby chicks cheeping in the small cab of your car/truck. For Lewis and Lovett it is still a thrill, and the fun of pecking chicks and soft wings never gets old.
We ushered them into their new warm home, with plenty of water, dry bedding and food to settle them in after their amazing 36 hour journey navigating all that the Postal Service has to offer. The area where the chicks live for the first 3 weeks of their life is called the brooder. There they grow from the tender day old chicks we get from the hatchery, to fully feathered, mostly hearty chickens ready for life on pasture.
When they first get to us, day old chicks want an environment that mimics life under a mother hen, which most importantly is warm and dry. We have plenty of dry bedding in our brooder, and we use nifty boxes called “Ohio Brooders” which I believe were developed by the AG department at Ohio State. They are our mama hens, consisting of an inverted box, with an insulated roof. They have heat lamps inside, which create the warmth the chicks need. The chicks can run in and out of the box to find food, run around or find just the right temperature.
This system saves us a lot of energy since we are only heating a small space for the little chicks, rather than heating the whole room. They do rely on electricity. Wednesday evening it started to snow and by Thursday morning we had at least 8 inches of snow and it was still coming down. By 10 am we lost power and I knew I had to act fast to keep the chicks warm and happy.
We have a whole farm generator that the tractor runs, but that was deep behind many pallets of boxes in the midst of a barn organization project. So I quickly drove our all electric F150 Ford Lightning down to the barn, backed it up to the brooder door, ran an extension cord inside and plugged in the lights and the Ohio Brooders.
Within minutes the startled chicks, who had been cheeping in protest at the loss of their heat, were happily chirping away under the renewed warmth under their Ohio Brooders.
Fun Fact
We use our electric truck to do our deliveries every week, and it uses about half the energy equivalent of driving our Toyota Corolla! And when the power goes out, it is a mobile battery we can run our house with, or take down and quickly get the brooder back online. According to the truck, we could power that one brooder (we have room for 3 batches in the brooder area, but only the first batch of chicks is here) for over 100 hours! That same amount of energy can drive the truck about 230 miles.
I’m not sure if I’m impressed at how long the brooder could run, or how much energy it takes to move a vehicle.
Here’s’ a quick video to show you how it works
Reber Rock Farm Blog 