This morning I got up early, packed up boxes of eggs and took our delivery to Jungle Jim’s. The people who work at the Jungle are super friendly. Everyone I saw along my route through Receiving to Natural Foods back to the cooler behind Meat and back out through the dock asked how things were going in the egg business. “Great,” I said, “I’m going today to pick up 125 new birds!” They were as excited as me for our new additions.

From Jungle, I drove west to Mt Healthy Hatchery.

We are lucky to have this awesome resource less than an hour from our home. They hatch a variety of different chickens, ducks, and game birds. You place your order for a specific hatch date then they can either ship your birds or you can pick them up. My pickup today was two boxes: one extra large full of 100 chicks and one medium box of 25 ducks.

I carried them to the car, cranked up the heat, and hit the road. It was a long ride home full of a chorus of chirp, chirp, chirps.

Once home, I set the boxes in the brooders and popped the tops. Look at all those little birds!

The black chicks in the top left are Australorps. All the others are Easter Eggers.

The yellow ducklings are Pekins and the black ones are Khaki Campbells.

I sat down in the brooder and laid my arms on the ground. The curious little ducks ran right up to check me out.

One sweet little duckling crawled up onto my hand and fell asleep. My heart melted.

A bunch of them were trying to nibble at my wedding rings and bracelet. One thought my phone looked tasty.

I hope you enjoyed this little peak inside the brooder. As our babies get bigger, I’ll post more so you can follow along with our growing farm family. Before we know it we’ll have duck eggs galore!