all five together

Here are all five of our newest babies all together. They're a handful!

two more!

Perhaps we should open a B&B? nah, just for the hens, they get room service. (I still cannot figure out why my sister says we spoil our animals...hummm?)

Peek a boo!

Fuzzy little babes! We're up to four and another will soon arrive.

Faith loves being a grammie! In fact she asked if she could "hold one of my grandchicks please?"

We've got chicks!

They are literally minutes old!

peep, peep, peep

Last night when we did the barn chores we check the nest to see what was happening and heard peeping! Faith got all teary eyed and exclaimed, "I'm a grandma!" This morning we saw that three had broken through the shell, it won't be much longer now!

In case you're keeping track, yes, it's been longer than 21 days, but I figure why wouldn't it? My mother calls what we have here the misfit farm, totally justified though. We have a horse that is aging faster than the speed of light, we've had him for nearly three years and he's aged about 6-7 years. I was told when I bought him he was "late teens, maybe 20, doubtfully 20." When the vet came she said right around 20 and then the equine dentist aged him at 24-25 last year.... We got a great deal on him, considering he's solid gold! Then we get a guard llama who is scared of his own shadow! A hen that most always lays yolk-less eggs that are the size of a grape or double yolkers, and she's the largest hen in the flock. Our milking doe sounds like a cow when she blats and snores when she sleeps our other doe undoubtedly thinks she's a horse. The older cat goes out to hunt at about 8pm and wants to come back in at 3am. She's learned that the door does not open at three and now waits until about 7:30. So these poor chicks started life off in the fridge, get to our farm and Queen decided to take her sweet time deciding if she was actually going to sit there, so it was a slow start for them. Mom came for a visit this weekend in hopes of seeing the chicks hatch, as Saturday was officially the 21st day, but with no luck. We did candle the eggs so she could see inside them and casually asked how I was going to train the chickens to get around the yard seeing as the were going to come out blind from all the candling! I laughed, and said why wouldn't they, it's the misfit farm!

So there you have it, I think we'll have chicks this afternoon! If we do I'll post pictures.

tap tap tap

We just came in the house, yes, we were checking on the eggs and it shouldn't be too much longer, we heard a bit of tapping from the eggs! Faith heard it and teared up with excitement. Soon, very soon we should announce that we've got chicks!

Can you tell the difference?

One has a chick inside and one does not, can you see the difference? We've been watching these eggs go from little black pea sized dark spots to this. It's very exciting. We're days away from the first hatching of chicks on our farm!

Yes, that's right, that's the second hen that been on the second nest. This is Knit, (she's got a sister that is just slightly larger than her named Purl. :-) ) She's a Black Australorp who's been through hell, or at least it might seem that way to her. Poor thing, seriously was out just minding her own p's a q's one fall afternoon and was attacked by a neighbors dog and nearly died. Took off half of her tail feathers, a chunk of wing and some of her backside. I thought we were going to lose her, but I took care of her and treated her wounds, ( I have experience in this department, a neighbors dog got after one on my chickens as a child as well. Didn't lose him either, not for a long time.) and she made an astounding recovery. Once she was better she found herself fancied by our rooster, a lot! She was of of the first ones to lose most of the feathers off her backside and her head and neck where he grabbed her to hang on. Because of the lack of feathers on her back was sunburned, lets not even go there..... Then she molted! Oh what a sight! Now picture this; one black feathered, sunburned bright red backed, half tailed, balding headed hen who then lost most of the rest of her feathers, like all three that were left! Her feathers have come back in quite nicely I think, even her tail feathers! I was not sure she'd ever get those back as it was quite a chunk from her tail but she did. This girl's tough!

Ordinarily I wouldn't go on so much about feathers, but it'll help the next part of the story. We've been checking in Queen (the hen that about ready to hatch out chicks) and seeing the other nest empty but eggs warm-ish. So we knew that somebody was sitting on them at least part of the time. Figuring that it was Rose; the hen that had been alternating with Queen for a while until the had her own eggs to hatch, (I guess she's as impatient as I am as she seems to have given up, more of an instant gratification type of girl.) until last night. We went out to do barn chores and saw the eggs were surrounded with thin black feathers and really warm. I knew Purl had no broodiness to her at all so I picked Knit up and checked if it was her who'd been feathering the nest, it was! I'm thinking hasn't this poor hen lost enough feathers? now she's pulling them out to line a nest that may not even hatch? Or maybe since she's spent most of her life without most of her feathers she doesn't know what to do with all of them! I'm kidding. You've heard the expression feathering the nest, well let me tell you she's done a great job of it. Hens will sometimes pull out their belly feathers when they are sitting on a clutch, it has to do with the heat and humidity required for incubation.

So that where we stand, days away from the first hatching and if everything goes well with the second clutch of eggs and they didn't get too chilled the other day when we had a cold snap we might have a second hatch in the beginning of May. Right around the time the broilers and replacement layers arrive! At least it's not boring around here. Oh, and in case you're keeping track, out of the 9 hens we have left one has been and remained broody, one is broody in an a.d.d. sort of way and one had secretly been broody but sees that you get hand fed thinks it might be ok to stay on the nest. Faith hand feeding her hen, waiting patiently to become a grammie!

old sneakers are a good thing

My nephew came down for a visit to the farm, this is him here. I don't know what it is about boys, frog, swamps, mud and water that all just seem to go together, it's like magnets. They cannot help themselves they just need to go into it. Well this is the result, he came up out of the swamp with many of these peepers, but this is the only one I got a picture of. It's a good thing he had is old shoes on too, between the swamp, helping to clean out the barn and just stinky sneakers in general you cannot imagine a more aromatic funk wafting up from those shoes. I'm sure it was a long ride home with those in the car.