Picking up Chicks: Primping and Prepping for Tilly Foster Farm

Lisa Walker got an early morning phone call from the Post Office recently. It was a call she had been anticipating since she placed an order for newborn chicks with the Murray McMurray hatchery in Webster City, Iowa.

“I got the call around 7 a.m.,” the Holmes resident and wife of Deputy County Executive Bruce Walker said. “And I picked them up around 7:15.”

 The chicks, a mixed group of standard breeds and bantams, arrived at the Walker house shortly thereafter. Walker, who raises Guinea Hens, as well as an assortment of ducks and chickens, will be raising the chicks until they are old enough to move onto Tilly Foster Farm. It is expected the brood will arrive next week. There, the fledgling flock will come under the care of Teresa Delahanty whose job it will be to oversee and manage the livestock as it returns to the farm.

Delahanty has a long history of working with animals and a Bachelor of Science degree in Veterinary Technology and a minor in Biology from Mercy College. Her interest in animals goes back to her days in 4-H where she raised and showed sheep as a youngster and then at age 12 began working as a volunteer at South Putnam Animal Hospital in Mahopac.

“I was always around animals,” said Delahanty who applied for her job at Putnam’s Highways and Facilities Department after rising to the position of manager at the animal hospital. “This job at Tilly Foster Farm is a perfect match for me.”

Delahanty, a single mother with two young children, will take up residence on the farm this week and hopes to host a Meet the Chicks day shortly after the young fowl arrive.

Mahopac Falls Troop 271 Eagle Scout Thomas Quinn will undoubtedly be on hand for the event. Quinn built a portable chicken coop as his Eagle Scout project and has donated it to the farm. The coop, which has beautifully painted panels created by his aunt, Elaine Gizzi of Stony Point, NY and his 85-year-old grandmother, Dorothy F. Heckmann who resides in Congers. The coop will be the nursery for the youngsters when they first arrive at the county-owned farm in Southeast.

Delahanty identified some of the chicks by breed. Included in the mix of chicks are Ameracauna, Barred Rock, Blue and Buff Silkie Bantams, Leghorns, Golden Polish and Red Stars. To date, none of the chicks has been named. That’s a project Delahanty thinks might be fun for the public to participate in when they come to see Tilly’s newest feathered residents.

Also expected to arrive in August at the 199-acre farm are several piglets.

But that’s another story.

—Theresa Oliver