For those unfamiliar with Tractor Supply Company, or TSC, it's the Home Depot of the agricultural world. Pretty much everything you could possibly want for your farm can be found within its walls, from goat food and castrating equipment to cowboy hats and fencing. They even sell tractors. And once a year, from March to May, TSC holds its Chick Days, when the sound of peeping and the sight of tiny golden fluffballs melt the hearts of even the most sophisticated urbanite.
This is why TSC sets a six-chick minimum and specifies that its animals are "for agricultural purposes only." The last thing anyone wants is for some slumming city slicker to wander in, oooh and aaah about the sweet baby chicks, and leave toting four of them home to their condo or townhome, with absolutely no concept of how to properly raise and care for the little birds. If they're lucky, those little chicks will end up posted for sale on Craigslist in a few weeks. If they're not so lucky, they'll become landfill.
Of course, we were no longer city slickers, so we didn't count. To be honest, compared to J, who was born in a big city and grew up in a middle-sized one, I was practically Little Mary Farmgirl, having spent sizable parts of my childhood playing with my grandmother's hens and guinea pigs, summering on a French Alpine farm, and roaming the rolling corn fields of the Garden State. I was becoming increasingly enthusiastic about returning to my scanty agrarian roots and helping J develop his own gentleman-farmer persona.
With our brooder's set-up finalized, several bales of pine shavings purchased, and a couple of 50-pound sacks of starter feed stacked in the corner of our sitting room, we were ready to receive our new arrivals. Like expectant parents, we'd completed our nursery. Now all we needed was the baby. It's a good thing Babies R Us doesn't hold Baby Days, featuring cribs filled with cooing little babies. Expectant parents aren't known for their patience those last few weeks of waiting.
Which is how we found ourselves at TSC this afternoon. We had absolutely no good reason to be there. We had everything we needed, and our 26 chicks were due to arrive from the hatchery in two weeks. Still, we found ourselves inexplicably drawn to the store, like moths to a golden light, except our golden light cheeped.
Despite J having extracted a promise from me earlier in the week that I would not purchase any more chicks, pullets, cockerels, roosters, hens, or anything remotely resembling a chicken (I dutifully agreed, although I did keep my legs crossed), I just knew that if there were any little Easter Eggers -- the Ameraucana breed, which lays eggs tinted pale pink to sky blue -- or teeny feather-legged bantams I wouldn't be able to maintain what little resolve I had. I arrived at the store first and quickly zipped my way to where the bins of chicks awaited, their heat lamps casting an eerie red light on the floor tiles. Inside the galvanized tanks, dozens of baby birds skittered around, gulping down water, pecking at feed, and nestling down wherever they felt was a good place... which sometimes was right on top of the feeder. Four tanks held a varied assortment of chicks: pale-yellow Cornish chicks, destined for someone's dinner table; speckled Sussex chicks, resembling chipmunks with their colorful stripes; honey-colored Golden Comets, with zigzag patterns down their backs; and generic yellow "pullets," with no further breed identification.
No Easter Eggers. No feather-legged bantams. Not even a ruddy Rhode Island Red chick, which surprised me, given the popularity of this particular breed in our area. I couldn't help but feel disappointed, even though I knew we weren't there to buy chicks. There was one bin, however, that caught my attention. That is where J found me, stroking a tiny bit of beige fluff I carefully cradled in my hand.
"NO DUCKS!!!" J exclaimed, sending the flock of ducklings scurrying to the other side of the brooder and causing my little friend to squawk. I gently stroked its fuzzy head, calming it down.
"But it's a Khaki Campbell," I protested. "It's so cute!" And cute it was, with its little brown webbed feet and its rounded brown bill. When we'd first discussed raising poultry, I'd attempted to convince J that Khaki Campbell ducks were the way to go. They were supposedly tidier than other ducks, they were friendlier than other breeds, and they were prodigious egg layers, giving about 300 eggs per year.
J put his foot down. "Nobody eats duck eggs," he informed me.
"The French do!" I countered. "Duck eggs are richer and tastier than chicken eggs, and they're fabulous baked in pastries and breads."
"The French also eat snails," J replied. "Those are rich in protein, too."
The chickens won. But that didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy holding an adorable little duckling or two for a moment. I continued to stroke the soft little duckie while J peered into the other bins.
"There's really nothing," J stated from the far end of the brooders. "What happened to all the different chicks they were supposed to have?"
"It's only the first day," I noted, reluctantly putting the darling duckling down and helping myself to a disinfectant wipe from a nearby stand. "They'll be getting orders every day, so there's a chance that tomorrow there'll be more bins with different chicks."
J goggled at me. "You mean we have to come here every day to check on chicks? Can't we just call in and find out what's on the menu for today?"
"I suppose," I answered, but J was already striding down the aisle. Giving one last longing glance at the ducklings, I followed him to the customer-service desk, where he was busily scanning a list of chicken breeds.
"Just circle the breeds you're interested in," the friendly woman in the TSC smock instructed me. "If it turns out that our morning shipment includes any of the birds you're looking for, we'll give you a call." J handed me the pen and the list and, scanning it swiftly, I circled Americauna, Buff Orpington, Cochin, Brahma, and Wyandotte. As an afterthought, I also circled Phoenix, although I sincerely doubted that our TSC would manage to get its hands on one, much less a multitude of this rare and expensive breed.
"Are you sad we didn't get any?" J asked as we headed back out to the parking lot. "We can always come back tomorrow... I don't think they're going to give us a call."
I shook my head. "That's okay," I assured him. "We've got two weeks until our chicks arrive, and then we'll have plenty of little fuzzies at home."
"Twenty-six of them!" J commented. "Although I think there's a threshold where adding another chick or two doesn't really matter. It's just another handful of feed at that point. I think we reached that when we passed 20, so if we'd found a few Easter Eggers today, it wouldn't have been a terrible thing."
I gave J a kiss, then I climbed into my car. "You just want a couple of test chicks to try the brooder out before the rest of them arrive," I said.
"That, too!" he admitted, waving goodbye as he headed off to his car.
Smiling, I pulled out of the lot and headed home. If J really felt that way, then maybe I would check TSC again tomorrow. And maybe call the next-closest TSC, too. And if they didn't have the chicks I wanted, that was okay, too. J would eventually have found out about the three Cuckoo Marans chicks I'd recently added to our hatchery order.
And the baby Buff Orpington rooster.
There goes that chicken math again!
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