Meet the Chicks (Part 3)

This should be the final edition of Meet the Chicks for this year. While it is a lot of fun hatching eggs and seeing the new babies, I am also quite glad that we are at the end of hatching season for now. The brooder boxes have been in the master bathroom until the babies are old enough to be moved outside, and it will be really nice to have my bathroom back to normal after it has been so filled with peeping little ones for a few months now.

These babies are some more Bantam Cochins. As they are bantams, they will always be smaller than a traditional chicken, and lay smaller eggs. They are a very sweet breed, and I think the kids will have a lot of fun playing with them as they get older.

Taking pictures of chicks is a lot harder than I had anticipated. They are constantly moving and constantly pooping. I had a container of wipes next to me the entire time to clean up poop. They also intermittently just decide they are going to go to sleep.

Or, when you have a pretty good group shot, one will just wander off to a little too far.

I think the birds from my first Meet the Chicks posting could use an update as they have gotten so big, so look for that in the near future.

Meet the Chicks (Part 2)

Welcome to the second installment of Meet the Chicks. If you missed the first post with our chicks, you can find it here. Our little farm is full of little chirping goodness this year. Many of these chicks were sent by my sister-in-law, all the way from Idaho. Picking them up from the post office was a lot of fun and made for a lot of smiles from everyone. There was a little boy in line that was amazed as I carried the peeping box away from the counter. I let him peek in the holes so that he could see there really were live birds in there. Squirt was with me to pick them up. It was also right after story and craft time at the local library, which is why he is sporting such an amazing hat.

We had taken a few out before I thought to get a picture, but you get the idea of what a box of shipped chicks looks like. 

These are our turkeys. We have a few different varieties, and it should be interesting to see how they feather out. There is one meanie who has been biting the others....that one may end up Thanksgiving dinner.

Princess's turkey, Marshmallow.

 I believe these cuties are Blue Orpingtons. They are Orpingtons, but I am not sure about the color. Their feathers are starting to come in really nicely and I am excited to see them as adults.

These are Bantam Cochins. Bantams are smaller size chickens, so these little ones will always be fairly small. They are actually a breed that loves affection. They also go broody more often than other breeds, so some people do use them to raise up babies of other breeds as well.

The last variety of birds I have to show you today are Lavender Orpingtons. These are from eggs that were shipped to us and hatched in our incubator. Brady is really excited about these guys since they are a rare breed. We  would like to be able to provide more people with these awesome chickens. They are starting to go through their awkward stage, but should be really gorgeous when they feather out completely. Some of these guys are the chicks I used in my Easter picture.

And that is all for now, although not the end of our chicks for this year. We are currently waiting on a few more to hatch. 

A Chorus of Noises

Our master bedroom currently sounds something like I imagine a rain forest so sound. There is a steady stream of bird chirps. The chirping is coming from turkeys, ducks, and chickens rather than parrots, toucans, and other exotic birds, but the effect is actually quite similar to my ears. We have a lot of new arrivals in our home, and I will try to introduce you to them soon, but for today I thought I would leave you with another noise.

There is an area in our front yard that is a bit lower than the surrounding land. Brady wants to dig it deeper and turn it into a pond, but for now it collects the rain water and turns into a marshy-type spot. A few weeks ago we noticed the croaking of frogs in the area. I have thought this was really neat, although I have wandered out there looking, and can't actually find one. It doesn't help that they stop croaking when you get close.

While taking out the trash a few nights ago, I decided to try and capture a little bit of our front yard symphony. It was dark outside, so you can't see anything, but it might be fun to listen to.

Meet the Chicks (Part 1)

I would like to introduce you to newest members of our little farm.

Sally

Sally was purchased from the local farms store. A few days before the first hatch, a very impatient Brady had been escorting Gizmo to the farm store to pick up some guinea pig hay, and could not resist bringing her home. As she is the oldest, she is currently the largest and most feathered out. Brady's shoulder has been a favorite roosting spot of hers.

Gearbox

Gearbox is a black Orpington. We think she is a girl, but we very well could be wrong. Spike was very excited for her to hatch and came running down the driveway after school the day I texted her imminent arrival. He was the one who got to name her. 

Watermelon 

Squirt LOVES watermelon and had decided to name his chicken accordingly. Watermelon is definitely acting like a rooster, and is bigger than Gearbox. His feathers are mostly black, but speckled with brown.

Cupcake

Cupcake was our first duckling to hatch, and was promptly named by Princess. We know that she is a girl because of her color. She is something of a ninja duck, and is also jumping off things or climbing. 

Sebastian

Gizmo is the proud mama of this little boy duck. He can often be found snuggled into the hood of her jacket, or cuddled up on her lap. He even follows her around when she sets him down.

Oliver

I suppose it is one of the facts of having so many animals, but sometimes things just don't go as planned. Oliver was the duckling that I named. He was an adorable little boy with dark markings. We have noticed a bald spot on his head, and he seemed pretty weak. Sadly, he began having seizures when he was three days old. Me and Brady held him and tried to keep him warm, but as the seizures got worse and I could tell he was in a lot of pain, we made a hard decision to put him down. I do miss him. 

Here is Sally, Watermelon, and Gearbox playing. Watermelon still had a little bit of umbilical cord on him, but that didn't stop him from trying to get Gizmo's fingers. 

Here is Sebastian following Gizmo around our front room. We are still in moving in mode, so please ignore the mess and paint cans. :) 

Happy Easter

 

Happy Easter from our little farm! These are three of our seven newborn lavender Orpington chicks, which Gizmo helped me photograph. As it turns out, baby chicks are very hard to take a picture of, and would much rather curl up on one of the kids' laps instead of a basket. Hope your Easter has been wonderful.

So Much Hatching Going On

The past two weeks have been filled with the tiny peeps of our newest arrivals. While we still need to work on perfecting our incubator process, we did hatch two black orpington chickens, and three ducks.

This was our first egg to hatch. One thing that I learned through the process was that chickens hatch differently from ducks. The chickens made a small hole, called a pip, and then slowly enlarged it until they could push themselves out.

The babies were so tired when they finally emerged. It was really sweet to see how they would cuddle up with the remaining eggs, periodically calling out to the others as they had the energy.

The babies should stay in the incubator until they dry out quite a bit and get to their adorable, fluffy state. 

When the ducks hatched, they would create an area of cracking, which would be followed by the egg wiggling. I am quite sure that the wiggling was from them turning in the egg, because the cracks would appear later on another side. When the cracks formed at least mostly around the egg, they would start pushing their way out. I did manage to get a video of out of them hatching. 

We have a Hova-Bator  incubator. It worked well for the price, but we did need to make a few tweeks. Adding the optional egg turner was a great suggestion from my sister-in-law. The eggs need to be turned a minimum of three times daily, and having it automatically done was not only easier, but made it so we were not dropping the temperature frequently by opening the incubator up. 

During the incubation period, we discovered that having a hygrometer was quite important. The chickens had a much harder time hatching then the ducks did, and I believe it is because the humidity was a bit dry for the them. By the time the ducklings were hatching, we had a digital one that we really like. The digital hygrometer/thermometer combo also showed us that the thermometer that came with the incubator showed about 8 degrees lower. Ideally, keeping the incubator at 99 to 100 degrees is what we were aiming for, so 8 degrees of difference was causing the babies to not develop like they should have been.

We kept a simple spray bottle next to the incubator so a few spritzes could quickly be sprayed in to raise the humidity as needed. We averaged out at 50% most of the time, but sometimes it did get up around 80% for a little while. 

Waiting for Peeps

About a month ago, our family had a very sad surprise. A neighbor's dog made its way into our backyard and killed four of our six hens while I was picking up Princess from school. We had let the chickens free-roam while we were finishing up their run, just making sure that they were shut in for the night so that coyotes or skunks could not get them. Since they stayed close to the house, we had thought they were safe during the day.

Especially after making the effort to bring them on our move with us, loosing our girls was pretty tough. I was particularly heartbroken over Pearl, who was our sweet Delaware who had lost both her feet to frostbite when she was young. At least two of the girls, Sweetie and Starlight, made their way to safety.

After we got over our shock of losing our girls, we started planning how to build up our flock again. Brady's sister sent us a really wonderful present in the form of a big box with lots of fertilized eggs. She raises some heritage and interesting breeds up in Idaho, so if you are around that neck of the woods, you can check out what neat birds she has here. She sent us some bantam cochins, black orpingtons, and some ducks. The eggs have been nestled in our incubator and we are counting down the days until they start hatching. While the ducks will take a bit longer, the chickens should be any day now. We can't wait to meet our new babies!

Brady bought an egg candler so that we could check on the chick's development as we waited. Candling eggs is incredibly neat. It reminds me of watching ultrasounds of our kids. There is not a super clear view of the chick, but the blood vessels feeding it from the yolk are there, as well the dark area that is the chick's body. I really like just seeing the small movements and knowing that there is life contained within the egg shell. Yesterday, I even saw a tiny silhouette of a foot that briefly stretched out.

We did try to capture some pictures of the candled eggs.  The eggs had been in the incubator for 16 days at this point.  Mainly you can see the blood vessels, but you can make out the darker "blob" of developing chick,.

Here is a video that Brady took to try and catch some of the movement.

This is the egg candler we are using. I would highly recommend it. 

Sheba the Wonder Dog

Part of our move to Texas included me telling the kids that the likelihood that they could get a dog would increase greatly. Princess began telling everyone who would listen about how she was going to get a dog. I sighed inwardly and wondered what kind of deal I had set up for myself.

We had only been here a few weeks when I saw two dogs listed on a local garage sale group that needed homes. They were two boys, and they person who had taken them in off the streets believed they were about 8 months old. They were both very skinny and my heart went out to them. Unfortunately, after they had been in our home for a few weeks, we had to face the fact that it was not meant to be. We don't think they had ever truly had a home, and they did not seem to want to be with us or inside the house. Once they figured out that between the two of them, they could push their way out whenever anyone opened a door, all they wanted to do was be free in the open countryside and bother the neighbors cows, or terrorize our cat, Cricket, while inside. The poor kitty went from having free roaming of the house to being stuck in the master bedroom all the time.

The kids really wanted a dog that would love them back, and it was hard for them to feel shunned by the pups, especially on top of getting used to a new area. We also felt that keeping them was unfair to our existing pets, since the dogs wanted to chase and try to bite Cricket, our bunnies, and our chickens. It took me a few weeks of working with rescues and shelters, but I found a cute young couple that were very excited to take them. I am happy that we were at least able to help them put on a few pounds each and get de-wormed.

Our nights got quieter for sure without all the howling, but I will admit that the house did feel a little empty, and I missed taking the dogs for walks around the property. I began researching breeds that would work well for us, and how much money we needed to save up to purchase one, since the breeds I was interested in were quite pricey.

When we attended the local winter festival, the city animal shelter had some of their adoptable animals there. Brady and the kids were instantly drawn to Sheba. I stood back, biting my lip and unsure if I was willing to try bringing a dog into the house again, but I caved. I am glad that I did.

Sheba is a believed to be a bit over a year old, and is of a mixed breed. The shelter said she was a Carolina dog. She physically resembles the akita breed as well with her short snout and curled tail. Both are not known for doing well around chickens, but she is so eager to please her humans that she sits quietly around the coop. She absolutely LOVES belly rubs.

She went through two families before making it to us, so she does have some anxiety about being left. This is understandable, and we are working to help her know that we will always come back when we leave the house and to make her more comfortable in her crate.

Our morning routine involves me getting her out of her crate and her making a frantic search of the house trying to find all of her people.

Cricket is handling having another red colored pet around quite nicely. We are still trying to figure out exactly how, but she has managed to establish some dominance over Sheba, who is easily four or five times her size. Apparently, her hissing is very scary. I think it will actually be quite good for her to have another pet around the house since she is strictly an indoor cat now and could maybe use the company. As for how she feels about it though, I think her face pretty much sums it up....