Kindnapping baby chicks to save them from the cold

hey this is Josh Stony Ridge farmer coming to you on a very cold Saturday morning uh it's about 31° up here on the farm uh we are on Stony Ridge Farm that's right got my friend Scott Vernon uh at the sustainable Homestead Institute in uh Spencer Virginia he's uh he's a good dude he's making me some signs I gave him some uh cedar wood planks and uh in trade to make some signs so there'll be a link I think right here to his page uh go ahead and check him out subscribe to him if you can um trying to get some of his subscribers over to me too so it's really chilly out the purpose of this video this morning is my baby chicks um just hatched I've got a hen down here sitting on eggs and she's been sitting on eggs for about 21 days I checked underneath her and she's got babies well tonight it's supposed to get down to 23° those little babies and that Mama it's just too much stress on them so we're going to put them in a uh uh chick tub that I have from Tractor Supply and we're going to make sure that they stay warm I've got a heat lamp water food and we're going to take good care of these babies because we don't want to lose any um I'm down to one chicken and baby chicks right now because of the uh coyotes and foxies here on the farm so I've got to protect them remember when you build a chicken coop you're not building a chicken coop for the chickens to stay in you're building a chicken coop for the critters to stay out so let's get it done so we're driving up to the uh Tobacco Barn here to get some stuff uh to get started there's buddy running off down the hill there's our wood Cher where they caught on fire let's see what we got here it's fairly unsafe to drive and film at the same time but uh we're on the farm so I think we can live with it so we've got two of these tubs that we use for uh doing our brood Chambers for baby chicks I just keep them up here they're galvanized probably galvanized and I was expecting more spiders so we'll take this put some sawdust in it and set it out for the baby chicks get it warm and then we'll kidnap the babies from their mama I really don't want to kidnap these babies from their mother but I want them to survive and better mom get her feelings hurt a little bit than baby chicks die um that's the main reason here I don't like to see things die unnecessarily and if I can do something here on the farm to save them then that's what I'm going to do so for all you people that have bleeding hearts about me taking the babies away from the mama uh it's so they won't die so thanks so got some cedar shavings we're going to sprinkle these in here cuz these baby chicks will be in here for 3 or four weeks or so smooth all that out got a uh inexpensive waterer plastic water we set it over here and a feeder and we're going to run down to the pig pin I don't have any baby chick food but I do have some really fine ground uh pig food so we'll put that in there for the babies it's not really the right thing to do but it'll get them a start before I go buy regular chick food so here are our babies we're going to put them over in our brood box I'm out of breath cuz I ran up the hill with them I don't want them to get too cold so they're all huddled up together going to put them in their little brood box here okay while we do this we're going to count them one two three little four five 6 7 8 9 10 11 this is an amazing amount of baby chicks 12 13 14 15 baby chicks awesome good job Mama hen so let's keep them warm we'll take a moment and show you this little apparatus I uh just put a clamp on here but now I can move my light uh to where I want it and if I want to adjust it and bring it down lower I just uh take my knot and uh move my knot down so that I can lower it down for the babies uh for the first few probably week or so they'll need more heat But as time goes on they'll they'll need that light backed up a little bit see how they're all bunched together down there right now uh when they're bunched together like that it means they're cold they're just trying to get warmed up from uh from the trip so they'll get better and life will be good for them I'm walking down now with my bucket uh we're going to steal some of the feed couple Scoops out of the uh Pig feeder that's a 16% I believe protein mix maybe 18% which will be good for the baby chicks for uh the first few days um chickens are omnivores they can eat pretty much anything and if they were following their mother around they'd just be eating bugs and dirt and stuff so they'll be just fine on it sometimes I think we overstress about what we're feeding our uh chickens and then we go out to uh McDonald's and eat a crappy McDonald's cheeseburger so um we need to think about that don't we the pigs are pretty curious little critters somebody's got a little bloody nose uh anyway they're pretty curious so I'm going to go ahead and give them a little bit of corn so they get out of my general area and they just uh eat the corn because they'll nibble on you they'll nibble on your legs or ankles or whatever so here's the uh pig food it's like a dust almost um let's see let's get this bit out here got some trash in there that's just leaves whatever dude so this stuff will be really good for the babies probably uh be able to get by with just uh feeding them this until they get on to regular food pellets so way more than I'll need cool little bucket though uh my friend gave me a bucket they're keeping eggshells for me so you can read that upside down uh to put in the garden in case you didn't know the benefits of putting eggshells in the garden uh you uh get what's called Blossom in rod on your tomatoes and sometimes other vegetables and uh that's just a Calcium deficiency in the soil you can crush up eggshells mix them in with your compost or mix them in with your garden soil and uh prevent blossom in rot so there's a little tip for you a little gardening tip I just doing a little walk back here just you know reminding myself of how nice it is to live out in the country um got a little Sunrise going on uh pretty cool so it's been about an hour and we're going to check on our little baby birds little baby birds let's check them out hello little baby bird hello little baby birds it looks like they're doing fantastic they're eating I think maybe they're water B is going to catch on [Music] fire yep the water bottle is starting to liquefy right there so it's good thing we checked on them uh baby birds are doing fantastic bird cam pow it's bird cam hey little baby birdies do you guys like bird cam action-packed bird cam so this is Josh Stony Ridge farmer saving some baby chicks this morning uh can't wait to watch them grow up and uh I thank you for watching subscribe to our page you'll see a lot more good fun stuff here on the farm and thanks a lot for watching us this is Josh sty Ridge farmer wo when dogs eat grass what happens later we will have vomitus baby chicks hey little baby birds it's bird cam I'm a cute baby bird what's your name that's Johnny Knoxville bird cam where the fun begins in the chicken Co bird cam bird cam little bitty bitty baby bird [Music] cam [Music] GRE up a the [Music] best