All posts tagged: backyardchickens

What To Expect With Shipped Chicks

 What will happen when my chicks are shipped?

 A handful of days before your shipping date we will send you your tracking number for your chicks and you will start to see movement on the number come Tuesday. We ship every Tuesday morning. Shipping on the chicks can take anywhere from 1-3 days depending on the route between our local post office in Sebastopol California and your local postoffice. We pack the chicks with a heat pack and enough gro gel to last them a journey of 4 days should the mail take longer than expected. We have shipping minimums of 10 chicks between February-June 1st to ensure that the chicks stay warm and secure while in transit. 

 When your chicks begin their journey of travel it is a good idea to set up your brooder at home so that it is all ready for them when you get them home. We recommend a nice warm space with feeders and clean waterers setup. We favor heat lamps as a source of heat AS LONG AS THEY ARE EXTRA EXRTA secure so that there is no chance of them falling into the brooder and causing a fire. Lots of folks prefer using heat plates for their chicks, it is not something that we use at the farm because we find that the chicks clump up under them and can get squished. A heat lamp that is at an appropriate height will allow for the chicks to draw near to it for heat or away from it if they want to cool down. 

 When your chicks arrive at your local post office they will be held there for you to pick them up.  Your phone number will be written on the top of the box and your post office will call you as soon as they arrive (sometimes very early in the morning) for you to come scoop them up. Before you leave for the post office go ahead and turn your brooder warming source on so that your brooder will be warm and cozy for them when you get them home.

When you get to the post office please open your box and make sure all of the chicks arrived safely. If any did not make the journey please take a photo of the perished chick inside of the box with the live ones so we can either refund or replace the chick for you.

 Once getting your chicks home allow them to get settled in alone for an hour. Let them stretch their legs, explore their new space, get a drink and relax before cuddling them. If a chick is looking sad or like it needs some extra love then you can hold it close to you to give it warmth and it will come around swiftly. 

 We recommend putting some powdered vitamins and electrolytes in your chicks waterer for the first week that they arrive at your home to help ease the transitional stress of travel. Powdered probiotics also will help boost the immune system of your birds from an early age and help them ward off any possible pathogens that they will encounter of the course of their life. Both probiotics and electrolyte resources can be found here both are inexpensive and really effective! 

alchemist_farmWhat To Expect With Shipped Chicks
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The 2019 Lineup

🌿The Lineup🌿

Want to know who of our lineup lays what? Here is a fun color egg chart labeled with the breeds. Represented here are all of the chicken breeds we are breeding in 2019 with the exception of the Alchemist Blues which are taking their swweeeeeeeet time in starting to lay 😉

🌿I believe they will lay a blueish/greenish but time will tell. Their color will be revealed any day now!

🌿Egg color and blue egg color in particular is a tricky thing to capture on film. Too overcast or too bright and the colors look different. We try to do our best when taking photographs but nothing is as fun as seeing the eggs in person 😊 This chart is a nice representation of everything side by side so you can pickup even the different hues in the cream eggs.

🌿💫 What’s the best tasting egg? The Marans get my vote, they do not lay at as high of a frequency as the others and as a result their yolks are really rich!

💫Who lays the most eggs? The Heritwge Welsummers, Sage Eggers and Double Silver Laced Barnevelders.

💫Who lays year round? Our Double Silver Laced Barnevelder.

💫Who is the biggest bird? Our Golden Laced Orpington.

💫Which breeds can be purchased as female chicks? Azure Eggers, Cream Legbars, Alchemist Blues, German Bielefelder 🌿

alchemist_farmThe 2019 Lineup
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The First Set

🌿And So It Begins🌿

This week I stepped into the hatching shed and cleared the space of its winter slumber. The ladies have begun to lay and everyday we are seeing new colors emerge that we will be enjoying for the 2019 season.


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I looked over the eggs collected, cheerful little gems, filled with the possibility of life and took a deep breath. I said a good long prayer over our eggs, our birds, our land, our infrastructure, our family, the folks who help us, and all of the people who support us.

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You see, breeding chickens and hatching eggs is so much more than that simple act for me. We provide jobs for folks, we preserve genetics, help with local food security and biodiversity of life all over the United States. We educate folks on connecting with the traditions of the past. We connect families with their land, help close loops in their lives, help reduce carbon footprints – one egg, one conversation at a time.


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Our genetics, our soil, our air, water and energy is concentrated in the eggs we collect everyday. All that is hatched and then sent out to all of you. A little piece of me is in every life we bring into the world and ship out.

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I ended my prayer, loaded the eggs and turned on the incubators. The deep hum of the fans brought back all of the memories of seasons past. The fans whispered the promise of life to come in just three short weeks. Three weeks and the sweet smell of freshly hatched chicks will fill the air, the sound of peeping and and scrabble of little curious feet scampering about the brooder.

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We are so honored each year to get to share this journey of the creation of life with you all. Thank you for your support of us and for recognizing the need for humane treatment of chickens. We could not do what we do without you! ❤️

alchemist_farmThe First Set
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Golden Laced Orpingtons

🌿Golden Laced Orpingtons🌿

I have a lot of folks ask me if a particular breed is “chatty” or “noisy”. I have found that all of the breeds we work with are naturally quiet unless they are laying an egg or a predator is present which seems like an appropriate time to make some noise!
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The common mistake chicken owners make is giving their flock treats in the morning. If the group gets used to having treats first thing they will start to call for you, wondering where their daily deliciousness is. We favor giving table scraps during the afternoon. Everyone comes running but they don’t bok at me if I am out to look at a watering system or auto door. 😊
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For their size, our golden laced orpingtons are remarkably quiet. They will give low cooing noises but I can only hear it when I am right next to them. They are not prone to a daily egg song as a cream legbar is. They are in and out of the nest without much fanfare or fuss ❤️
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It is rare that a hen is equally as beautiful as a rooster of the same breed. The golden laced Orpington is one of those breeds that is just all around beautiful, personable, safe for all ages to handle and hilarious to watch. They are not particularly agile birds, they romp around the farm when running and when walking they saunter like large clouds or your grandmothers boat of a Cadillac. 🌿
If you are looking for a breed for overall sweetness, pet like ability and large eggs – this is the breed for you! ❤️

alchemist_farmGolden Laced Orpingtons
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Moss Eggers

🌿Moss Eggers🌿

We are always tinkering to find new depths of color for eggs. Colorful eggs make excellent conversation starters that lead to discussions on where our food comes from and how it is treated along the way.
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Not all eggs are equal in terms of nutritional value. Every chicken has the ability to turn an egg into something exquisitely nutritious but they must be given the proper forage and feed to be able to pass on whole nutrients to us.
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In a world of factory farmed/caged pearl leghorn chickens you will never find a green egg such as this. This color, and all the colors we breed for represent something different. To us they represent a different possibility for our food systems. A possibility in which animals are treated with respect and given excellent living conditions. A possibility in which we feed our families real food that is raised in integrity with our environment.

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It does not have to be out of reach, it can be a reality and it can start with your own backyard. One small coop, a few hens, a small garden and before you know it – you and your family are eating pure food ❤️
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alchemist_farmMoss Eggers
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A Photo Review Of 2018

🎉 2018! 🎉

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You have been a year full of beauty and community connections. A year where grace was poured over our farm and we were able to pour it back on our community. Thousands of chicks were hatched – countless hatching eggs wrapped and shipped, all with a smile❤️
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With open hearts and open minds we do a chicken dance into 2019, we took photos of our breeding groups for the coming year and are so elated to share them with you in the coming weeks!

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Do you all sit down and write your intentions for the coming year? We do! It is a tradition I have followed for years, I save each years proclamations and it is always fun to look back and see what we were calling in and how God got us to where we REALLY needed to be 😊
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Let’s call in an amazing 2019 together!

alchemist_farmA Photo Review Of 2018
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Trust

💙Trust💙

We handle every single animal on our land. I can turn my back to any rooster, bend down in-front of and pick up one of their hens without fear of being attacked. Any of our birds can be flipped upside down, held comfortably on one arm, pet, adored and then respectfully released back into the field.

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Learning the language of animals is something that cannot be taught in a book, it is all field experience. A simple call or stance speaks volumes to me about a birds mood. Each breed has a temperamental theme and each bird within that breed has its own character. I had a gorgeous Marans cockerel last year that did not physically do anything to me but every time I went to feed the flock I could feel that he was thinking about chasing me off. I would stop my feeding, crouch down, look at him and throw the same energy back at him, he would casually strut away knowing his place but even that exchange was one I did not want to breed so let him go. Chickens and roosters in particular are quite emotionally loud if we listen. We start each breeding group with 10 boys and narrow it down to two or three whose personality we want to pass on to future generations.
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It is our hope that over the years we will be able to educate folks that roosters and chickens are safe to be around. There is no reason to keep a mean rooster in your life when there are plenty of good reliable ones that can step up to protect your flock.

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Pictured here is one of our Sage Egger roosters. Sage Eggers are one of the breeds we have available in our 2019 lineup of birds. He is a gorgeous boy with exceptional creole patterning on his saddle feathers. Fun fact, the saddle feathers on roosters are used for fly fishing.

 

alchemist_farmTrust
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The Making of Blue

🦋The Making Of Blue🦋
🦋Selective Breeding🦋
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Many people ask what kind of quail lay our blue speckled eggs. The answer is a domesticated coturnix quail. The blue egg layers come in a feather types and are the size of traditional coturnix pharoh quail you may have seen folks keep as pets.
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This photo illustrates how the blue eggs were achieved overtime with selective breeding. From left to right we can see the closest egg to us was laid with a heavy bloom, next is an egg with a blue tint followed by a white egg with a slight blue tint then more and more blue saturation of color as the line continues.
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I love playing with egg colors and and the quail allow me to achieve colors that could take a lifetime with chickens. It takes an average of 5 1/2 months for a chicken to lay. It takes 6-8 weeks from birth for a quail to begin laying.
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With every egg selected and incubated we are creating something beautiful. Our pairing with nature and gift to all of you!
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We are done shipping quail chicks for 2018 but we will be shipping fertile hatching eggs of both the blue and brown speckled quail eggs if you would like to try to hatch them at home! ❤️

alchemist_farmThe Making of Blue
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Community Support

We are committed to education and supporting our youth to be strong leaders of tomorrow. With elementary school aged children of our own we are inspired to give back to our community. 

 The issue of food scarcity for elementary school aged children has come to the forefront of our hearts and minds. Poverty in the United States is a larger issue than most of us realize because families and children in need feel the stigma of being poor and do not ask for help.

After some research we have decided to focus our efforts of community support through an amazing organization named End 68 Hours of Hunger. We chose this organization because it is making an amazing impact for how small it is.

 End 68 Hours of Hunger is completely volunteer run, every bit of money donated goes straight to feeding elementary school children who do not have food to go home to on the weekends. Many children in the US receive free breakfast and lunch through their schools but come the weekend they have 68 hours of hunger to endure. This organization equips every child identified in need with a backpack or bag they can take home so they have food to make it through the weekend.

 The organizers of 68 Hours of Hunger give all of us a few ways to support these children.

  1. You can donate directly to them and they will distribute the funds to groups that are already serving communities of children. Some communities have more children they serve than others and they need money to keep filling bags/backpacks to send the kids home with each week.
  2. You can start your own drop off site and pick a local school to help weekly. 68 Hours of Hunger provides excellent plans for how to start your own drop off site and help children right in your backyard that are invisible to most of us. The plans clearly outline how to prepare a backpack for a child with two breakfasts, lunches and dinners for between $5-$10 each weekend.

 Why are we so passionate about this?

We are a small family farm. What is the connection of breeding/hatching chickens and an organization like this? The answer is our children. In a world with so little we can control the one thing we feel we can help and put positive energy towards is food.

We know the power of nutrition and how it can sway the attention span, behavior and health of young children. Feeding children who are silently struggling over the weekends will have a lasting effect on how they perform in school. Education will help guide them toward a path away from poverty. Level blood sugar from having regular meals will lead to good behavior, keeping children out of detention and away from the stigma of “being bad”. No child should be punished for being hungry, so many issues can be stopped in their tracks with simple nutritional needs met.

Beginning in 2019 we will be donating a portion of our proceeds to this organization. We hope that you will join us TODAY in supporting them. In 2018 we will be contacting our local schools to see if there is a need in our immediate community near the farm so that we can start to create change on our local level as we support the national efforts. 

This is going to be an ongoing effort for us. We chose the name Alchemist for our farm because we are always transforming one thing into another on the land. Soil becomes pasture, pasture is food for the hens, the hens lay eggs, eggs turn into chicks, chicks turn into hens, the hens fertilize the soil and as the rain comes new pasture grows again and the cycle continues.

Will you become an alchemist with us? Will you help transform your local community or national community into a place where young children are fed? We hope so!

 

alchemist_farmCommunity Support
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The Colors Of Fall

🍃The Colors Of Fall🍃
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Each month the colors of our hatching eggs vary slightly. Some months we see heavy speckling and color saturation, other months heavy blooms and pastels.
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This basket of color was assembled yesterday after our collecting. The photos and colors are like a journal entry in the diary of our life here on the farm.
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Soon the hens will rest and all that will remain are the quail eggs. For now it is lovely to get to soak in nature’s egg rainbow.
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Our last shipment of chicks will go out October 2nd this year and we will continue to ship chicken and quail hatching eggs as long as the ladies allow through fall.
alchemist_farmThe Colors Of Fall
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