Bountiful Baskets and CHICKS!

Chicks

Our home is overrun with chicks right now. We received our shipment of chicks from Meyer and had the same problem we did last year and lost about half of them. We are down to 19 out of all the chicks (1 D'Anver from the feed store died and we sold 2, the rest were deaths from the shipped chicks). I don't know why they die like that for us. They are at a good temp, we're using the new Eco-Glow from Brinsea so they can regulate their own temp more naturally. They have clean food and water. When we first got the chicks we could pick out about 5 that we didn't think would survive. They showed no interest in food or water even when dipping their beaks in it and were wobbly. All 5 of those died. After those 5 the rest of the chicks showed no symptoms. I would check on them in the evening then wake up to a dead chick or two every morning. Very frustrating! After about 1 1/2 weeks it stops and the rest are fine.
We have the following left:
2 white cochins
3 partridge cochins
1 easter egger
1 buff silkie
1 D'Anver
4 bantam white frizzle cochins (we think one is a roo, and one is smooth)
1 Ancona (?)
1 Lakenvelder (?)
2 mystery birds
3 bantam easter eggers (I think 2 are roos but we'll have to wait and see)

Not only these chicks but we put 27 eggs in the incubator from local breeders. We got 15 silkie eggs and 12 mixed breeds. 16 of those made it to lockdown on day 18. Today is day 21 - Hatching Day! Yesterday I woke up and went to record the temp/humidity like I always do and found this...

4 more hatched throughout the day. We woke up this morning to one more and another just hatched a few minutes ago. We have 8 left and none of them have pipped yet but I did hear chirping in a couple of them so hopefully they'll show themselves today.
Yesterday morning I picked up 8 cream legbar eggs from a local gal. They are such pretty blue eggs. I compared them to Amber's, our EE, eggs and they are pretty close to the same color. I'm tempted to keep one though since they are rare and sell for $$! Meyer hatchery sells theirs for $30/chick! Once we get our farm I'm thinking I could get a rooster and sell the eggs and chicks. I already have 2 buyers lined up for the chicks.
We only have room for 4 chickens so we have some decisions to make. So far our possibilities are:
bantam frizzle cochin
bantam cochin that we hatched
a silkie
Blue Copper Maran that we hatched (they are the chocolate egg layers)
Cream legbar
bantam easter egger (I think she's in the definite list)

A lot of our decisions will be influenced by gender on the bantams and hatched eggs. Hope we get some girls we like!

Here is a video of one of the chicks hatching. The other chicks block the way a little but it's still fun. I took a video of another one hatching too but it's not edited yet.

Bountiful Baskets

We signed up for Bountiful Baskets this week and it couldn't have come at a better time. We went grocery shopping and restocked our meat supply but didn't get many veggies. We picked up our bounty this morning. For those that are unfamiliar you contribute to Bountiful Baskets and they pool the money and use it to get a discount on produce. It is $15/basket in our area and we got the following in our "basket":

1 pineapple

1 bag of potatoes

10 apples

7 pears

7 bananas

celery

kale

lettuce

a bag of anaheim peppers

2 squashes

4 avocadoes

a box of mushrooms

I added this up with the cost at our local grocery store and it would've cost me $40!

The next step is figuring out what to do with it all. We don't very rarely use peppers, celery, pears, and mushrooms. And 10 apples will last us forever since I can't eat them (I'm allergic to fresh fruit!). 

So we broke out the dehydrator. We cut up all of the celery, a few apples, and the bananas we already had in the house and threw them in. We also cut the mushrooms and plan to do those in the next batch. I think I'll roast the peppers and then freeze them so we'll have them when I feel like making some salsa verde. I think I'll juice some apples and the pears and make fresh juice. Overall I think we'll participate again next time.

Scraps for the chickens. They are feasting today!