Peeps

Fair warning, this is a bit longer than my usual post!

I remember how excited I used to be when the Sears Christmas catalog arrived, how I would get a marker and circle all the zillions of toys that I had not a prayer of getting, but had to put on my list anyway. It was the mail highlight of my year, until I was about 8 or 9, and the Murray McMurray catalog started coming! I would sit and pour over the pages of that colorful publication for hours, and circled nearly every listing in hopes of one day ordering peeps.

For those unfamiliar with the way hatcheries work, you can order on the phone or online, and they line up eggs in incubators (the big hatcheries already know how many they'll hatch out of every breed for each week) and as soon as the chicks hatch, they are put in a special shipping box and put in the mail.

Yes. The Mail, as in USPS.

As far as I know, USPS is still the only carrier willing to transport live creatures like peeps and honey bees. I have heard horror stories of the 2 being in a mail truck wreck, so I don't really blame FedEx and UPS for drawing the line. They get sent via an express service that is faster than Priority, but not like the express next-day service you can buy either. Peeps hatch having just finished absorbing the proteins in the egg, from which they have about 3 days worth of survival without additional food or water, assuming they are kept in an ideal temperature. 

I know there were many times that my mother's loose barn hens put this to the test by hatching out chicks in the hayloft. They sometimes were in such a hidden nook, that it was a couple days before we realized we were hearing peeping from *somewhere*. When we finally moved enough tack trunks and hay bales to find them, we always put momma hen and her babies in a horse water bucket, and lowered it down carefully so that they could forage in the barnyard without having to make a 15 foot leap down first. Finding pancake-peeps in the aisle was not my favorite thing, and yes, it did happen now and then when we didn't hear them before they started exploring the hayloft.

The biggest difference in what mom's hens did, and what the hatcheries do, is temperature. Mail trucks are not climate controlled, and in the summer they get VERY hot. Likewise, in the spring and fall (hatcheries don't ship after September or before March usually) the trucks can get pretty darned chilly. Then there's all the waiting around in sorting facilities and post offices. I cannot tell you how many people I've heard say that most of the peeps were dead on arrival because it was summer, and the postal clerk felt sorry for them being in the hot trucks so they put them by the air conditioning.

This just goes to show you how well the average mail clerk can read. The shipping boxes all have temperature warnings printed on them. Big, bold, bright colored lettering...

Heat they handle pretty well, cold, not at all! So, hot weather travel means they need to arrive within 2 days and get water right away, with some honey added to help pep them up from the draining heat. Cold travel means all the smaller ones will die before 2 or 3 days are over, they simply can't handle being at less than 65 degrees for more than a few hours without losing too much body heat.

So, back to when I was a kid, and ignorant of the details. All I knew is that I had about $100 saved up of egg money, and I had a McMurray catalog *you have to envision me rubbing my hands with greedy excitement here*

I remember my first peep order was a total of $72, which was HUGE to me then. I got about half laying breeds, and about half bantams, just for fun. Of the 50 chicks I ordered (the minimum that McMurray will ship, so they stay warm together in transit) there were one of this, 2 of those, one of that... I'm sure the unfortunate employee who had to fill my order got their exercise running all over the hatchery for the 20-something breeds I wanted! And as I have found is common with McMurray, they tossed in several extras, probably because they could tell it was a child's order, from the dreadful handwriting on the order form (yes, as in, mail in, this was in the 1980's, the dark-ages-before-internet).

The best part of getting peeps in the mail is the phone call from the PO, it is usually tough to hear the postal clerk over the raucous peeping, but the background noise certainly gives away the reason they're calling! Of the 56 or so they shipped I believe every single one of them survived, and made it to adulthood, much to my father's dismay. I am positive he was hoping a certain amount of attrition would keep him from having to build more chicken yards!

These peeps grew up spoiled, constantly handled, and healthy despite all my annoying attention. Of that first batch we had several that ended up living more than 10 years, which is rare, and all the fancy ones were lovely examples of their breed. I recall only one chicken who was a little odd. Her name was Mrs Buffy. She was a Buff Bramah Bantam, and she both laid eggs, and crowed....... a very gender confused chicken. That was the only one that mom would raise an eyebrow to and grumble about inbreeding.

I perpetuated my own peeps for a while after that, using an incubator from my Aunt's classroom. I only did a handful a year so my dad wouldn't run away from home, since we were up to about 100 chickens at this point! I feel I should mention that nearly half were actually just the loose barn chickens of random cross breeding.

Well, I just HAD to do another McMurray order after meeting the most huge and handsome rooster I'd ever seen in my life, at Chatsworth house in Devonshire. This enormous buff rooster was taller than my knees, and was wandering loose with a few friends in the fancy manicured gardens of the Duke of Devonshire's abode. I offered him the crust of my awful sandwich (you have to go to england to see how such simple foods can manage to be inedible, yet cost a fortune) and he ignored that and stole the whole rest of my sandwich out of my other hand! I was in love.

Upon returning home, I grabbed my McMurray catalog and decided he was a Buff Cochin. So I had to order another 50 peeps just to get this guy! He really was just THAT cool. 4 ducks and 40-something chicks later, I had my boy! Easily twice the size of the other peeps, the puffy beige peep was immediately king of the coop. Sadly, 6 or 8 of this batch was DOA.

This 1993ish order was not quite up to the quality of the ones from 7 or so years before. They didn't live as long, their feather patterns weren't quite as text-book perfect, and they weren't as easily tamed. Signs of inbreeding.

It was about 12 years later that I did another order from McMurray.

To start with, my order of 50 peeps, 8 ducks, 4 geese, was up to a staggering $240, and upon arrival, one third of the order was DOA. In June. I don't know what the mail people did to that box, but another third was dead before 24hrs had gone by. I was devastated. All those tiny dead bodies was a heart-breaking thing to see, and I stayed up all night doctoring the survivors, dosing them hourly with warm water and honey. The people at the hatchery were very nice about it and said they'd send me replacements as soon as they were ready, but we were going on vacation, and I just couldn't have brand new peeps for a house-sitter to deal with. So, my handful of chickens didn't have any more company for a year.

The replacement order I got the next year was nearly as bad. Almost half of those died, either on arrival or shortly thereafter, despite my having them go to the city post office, rather than the local one. I had figured one less day in transit would make the difference. Apparently not.

At this point, I had already had several of my McMurray chickens die of unknown causes. There were ones still at my mom's farm that outlived the new ones I'd ordered! I became rather upset with the new McMurray chickens, many of which were flighty, unmanagable hens who loved to eat eachother's eggs. Very few had decent feather patterns, and I had 3 die of eggbinding in their first laying season. That is pretty unusual.

So I googled Hatcheries, and came up with Cackle Hatchery. Tons of fun breeds, 4-H specials, and they'll ship a minimum of 25 peeps. Near enough to have safe shipping time, but they didn't send to VA because of a test that VA requires that no other state asks for. Figures. Fortunately, they were happy to ship to the nearest WVA post office! Score!

I am pleased to say that only one peep was DOA from Cackle. It was a bantam, and had been trampled by the big cochin peeps in it's section of the box. The post master at the WVA office was happy to hold them a couple hours while I drove out to get them, and he even kept them in a warm place. The chicks nearly all grew up to adulthood. Good thing too, since by this time, many of my McMurray hens had bitten the dust. I still have a good number of the Cackle chickens we got, although the winter before this one we lost a huge part of our flock to the horrible winter blizzards, and the attack-goat (again, a tale for another day).

I have recently learned that the McMurray hatchery had to put down the majority of it's breeding flock just after I did my orders, due to an avian flu breakout. I can't help but think that those chickens had been inbred to the point that they were probably susceptible to nearly every avian ailment out there. The quality just didn't compare to the birds of a decade before.

For now, I will continue to try and acquire my chickens locally. I have recently found a web forum for VA chicken fanatics, and craigs list has been pretty great for finding local peeps as well. I know that Tractor Supply Co. gets its' peeps from MtHealthy hatchery, and I get pretty healthy chicks from them, but I am sick and tired of getting boys out of bins marked as being pullets! With local breeders, you can pick through peeps that are about 10 weeks old, at that age you can start feeling spur nubs, so you'll know if you're getting boys or girls.

This spring, my only peeps so far are the 3 silkies I picked up at a chicken swap in Orange, from a lovely local farm. It's been years since I had one. They are healthy, friendly, and awfully cute! And hey, I had silkies WAY before Tori Spelling had hers... humph. She's such a wanna-be...