Petunia, our Chihuahua, had her puppies last night, four healthy little ones.

Chicks are hatching as I type this.

I’ll post more details and photos later today or tomorrow!

I’ve been quite preoccupied lately and haven’t posted like I should.

I thought the best way to catch up would be to catch up with photos.

Here we go!

Here are some pictures of our farm. It is pretty much a “clean slate” for us to start with, just a small amount of clean up work. We will plant fast growing trees around the back and side property lines as a windbreak and also to hide the view behind us.

February 20 would have been my Mother’s 84th birthday. We had our first two Serama’s hatch that day. Felicity named the first to hatch Tina. I named the second to hatch Nonnie. That is what my Mother’s grandkids called her, and being her birthday, I felt it appropriate. If it turns out it’s a boy, we will call him Jack instead. Jacqueline was my Mother’s middle name.
This is Tina.

This is Nonnie. The baby chicks love Beanie Babies to nestle up to.

Here are the two of them together.

Gregory loves to hold the chicks and is a very good incubator monitor. Here he is holding Tina.

We also celebrated the birth of our first Naked Neck (Turken, aka Transylvania Naked Neck) chick. Her name right now is Liza, but if it turns out to be a boy, will be Curly.

Mike once told me he thought the Sicilian Buttercup chickens were pretty neat. Since they are on the critically endangered list, I though I would surprise Mike with some eggs for these chickens. He thought it was neat, but we figured we wouldn’t be able to keep the chicks, since they are LF (large fowl, meaning full size chickens, not bantams). Well, once we signed the papers on the farm, he decided he wants to keep them and raise the breed. Here are his first chicks to hatch this past week.

Here’s ONE ROTTEN CHICKEN, Gabe!

Yet another baby in the house, Bunny is her name.

I am participating in Judy’s Quilt a Long over on her blog at PatchworkTimes. Here are the HST (half-square triangle) sections that were the assignment for part 2.

Last but not least…a full incubator! 75 eggs inside!

Have a wonderful Sunday evening!

Well, today was supposed to be a day of sewing on quilt blocks for Felicity and I during Judy’s Quiltathon.  We got nothing done today because….

We signed the papers on our 5.4 acres of land for our farm today!!!  We even got a farm truck along with it!!!  We are all eggstatic (lol). It needs a bit of clean up work, but nothing serious.  It is down the road from where we used to rent before moving to our current rental house.  We looked for land when we moved out of that place, but could find nothing where we wanted to be in our price range.  God made our week this week AWESOME!

Also, obviously I was off count on hatch day for the first of the many batches of eggs in the incubator.  I had planned on hatch day for Sunday. We had 3 baby chicks hatch yesterday and 4 so far today. WHEW! What a tired Chicken Mommy I am tonight.  Photos to come soon.

So in getting back on track for the Quiltathon, tomorrow I will have photos as proof that Felicity and I are participating lol. We’ve got so much to do and are excited to have the day after Mass to work on it all while Mike is at work.

I received another batch of eggs from Lisa on Backyard Chickens (same place my other eggs came from).  They arrived Saturday, and I put them in 2 egg cartons in order to let them warm to room temperature.

Well, as I have told everyone before, Gregory is really fascinated with the eggs in the incubator. Soooo…. Felicity found him in the kitchen with 2 of the eggs in his hands. YIKES!  We put them back in the carton and moved the carton back on the counter away from Gregory’s reach.

Later in the evening, as I was checking the incubator temp and humidity….. I found 2 of the eggs already in the bator!!! GREGORY!!!  Well, one was fine but the other he had cracked, looks like he dropped it. BUT only the shell cracked, not the membrane and nothing was leaking out. So, we duct taped the egg and we’ll see if it develops. LOL  Gotta love my little guy.

So, all the rest of the eggs went in the bator late Saturday night…so 21 days from then, we’ll have more little chickies running around.

On Friday, Gregory actually started holding Tuff and Gabe. Actually picking them up and holding them!!!  I was so excited! That is an incredible accomplishment for my little sensory boy!

We’re keeping Tuff and Gabe from the first hatch and Charlie from the second hatch. The rest we will sell and place in good homes only.

Have a great Monday!

Ok, yes, I did have a 2nd hatch of chicks.  Just so happened they hatched the preceeding two days before Gregory landed in the hospital for four days.  A post with the details just kind of “fell through the cracks”.

Here’s photos of a couple of the chicks.  We had a total of 8 hatch. The last of the group, I had to help out and it died on it’s way out of the shell. I gave it chicken CPR and it started breathing again.  I loved on it and talked to it almost non stop for two days, but it passed away.  We have 7 living chicks from that hatch now.

Here are some photos from the hatch.

Charlie

Charlie also.

Another chick hatching

Ok, now on to our babies from the first hatch!

Tuff, Gabe and Kota both photos 1-11-09  13 -14 days old

Gabe 1-11-09  13 days old

Kota 1-11-09   13 days old

Tuff  1-11-09  14 days old

I’ll have some more fun photos tomorrow or Tuesday.  We discovered that Gabe loves Yahtzee and being include in family game night!

If you are following our first hatch of chicks, the CHICKS ARE HERE!  Actually, one hatched on 12/28 and the other two on 12/29.

Click here for the first hatching post.

Two of the chicks I had to help out of their shell, rather, I had to hatch them.  Their air cells were very large and when they pipped, it was way down in the middle of the egg, instead of around the top of the large end where they know how to pip then zip themselves out. 

The first to pip, Tuff, pipped then for 12 hours was very active and very responsive to voice when I talked to her through the incubator.  But, at about 12 hours, she stopped moving and trying to get out and was almost completely unresponsive anymore.  She came right out after I broke away her shell and did fine.

The second to pip, Gabriel (was Gabby until we realized we’re pretty sure she’s a HE).  At 10 hours he zipped himself right out!  The zip line was right around the top of the large end of the egg, just as it should be.

The third to pip, Kota (short for Dakota), ended up in the same situation as Tuff.  I finally realized what the problem was, though, because I noticed the pip hole so far down in the egg instead of close to the large end.  So, after about 8 hours with her, I went ahead and broke away her shell.  As soon as I got a large piece off, she stuck her leg out and grabbed my finger with her toes.  She came out screaming and is still, by far, the loudest one of the trio.

Many people will disagree with me assisting the hatch of my two chicks.  I would rather help them and they not make it than sit back and watch them die because I didn’t attempt to help.

All three are doing awesome!  These chicks are Frizzle Cochin Bantams.  Frizzle means that their feathers stick out, as in grow opposite of the way they should.  These chicks all carry the frizzle gene, though it looks as Tuff is the only one with frizzled feathers.  All three have their feathers growing in rapidly on their wings.  I will be posting photos tomorrow or Thursday of current photos.

Here are photos of their births and shortly after:

Tuff fresh out of the shell (Gabriel has large hole in egg and Kota small pip in egg)

Newborn Tuff

Gabriel hatching

Newborn Gabriel

Kota hatching

Newborn Kota

All three newborns

All three in brooder 12/30/08

Here’s why we changed Gabby’s name to Gabriel….he keeps trying to crow!

Felicity and her chick, Gabriel

We have more eggs from the same person due to hatch Friday or Saturday!  We can’t wait!!! I’ll try to do better with posting about them when they hatch. 

One of my most favorite places on the web made the news, big news, on January 2!!!

USA Today

 SF Bay area ABC station

Now, if you aren’t already a member over there on the forum, click below and join now!  We’re over 20,000 members and growing rapidly!

See ya there!

We’re down to five Frizzle eggs and one of the Silkie feathered green-egg layer eggs.  Had another blood ring yesterday we had to toss out.

I do have more eggs coming from the same lady, DipsyDoodleDoo on BackyardChickens . They should arrive Friday/Saturday.

We are all getting excited about these babies hatching!  It’s so amazing to see them moving around within their shell when I candle them!  My friend, Dorey, said I was creating my own baby ultrasound

We are in the last five hours of day 12.  Click the link below to see a developing chick on each day.

Day by Day Unborn Chick Development

We’ve been really busy getting ready for Christmas!  I’ve still got a few gifts yet to make for the kids, but I am confident I will get them done without stressing.

We bought new furniture for the family room yesterday!!!  The first new furniture we’ve ever bought for the family room.  We are all excited!  I’ll post photos in a few days after it is delivered and the room presentable.

 Take Care!

It took me nearly 4 days to get the temps stable in my incubator.  It would stabilize, then go crazy again.  Now, it’s stable for the third time and has been stable since Wednesday night.

I just got done candling all 12 remaining eggs (after one was dropped the other day).

The 1 Silkie feathered green egg layer…the shell has gotten so dense I can’t tell anything except where the air sac is now.  So I’m going to keep it in the bator full term.  Does the dense/thick/opaque shell mean anything I should know about?

The 11 Frizzle eggs:
2 blood circles (dated 11/30 and 12/2). Blood circles means that a chick was developing and “quit” for unknown reasons.
3 clear (dated 11/29 and two from 11/30) I’m sure they were too old by the time I got my temps stable(for the 3rd and final time)  Clear means the eggs were not fertile or nothing ever began to develop.

The other 6 are FANTASTIC!!!!  Get this, one of the 11/29 ones, we’re even thinking it might have 2 chicks in it!!!   Either it’s two or if it’s one, it’s pretty big and HATES the light.  There was lots of swimming around when I was candling it. I’ll look at it again tomorrow or Wednesday night to see if I can tell better for sure.

Mike even watched me candle the eggs and he’s the one that first noticed I might have an egg with twins in it even before I did.

We finished the incubator around 10pm last night and it took until 1:45am to get the temperature and humidity levels stabilized and where they should be.  The eggs went into the incubator at 1:45am on 12/7/08 for “day 1″.  Expected hatch date should be early 12/28/08. 

We used the directions from “MissPrissy” over at Backyardchickens.com/forum to build our homemade incubator.  Our ice chest is the same brand as hers, but looks to be about 1/3 larger.  I also had to bump up to a 40 watt light bulb in order to get the temps up high enough. The incubator is so large I could incubate 5 dozen eggs in there at once, easily. Hummmm.

Here’s the link to her instructions:

MissPrissy’s Homemade Chic Chick Incubator

We were all involved in the making of the ‘bator last night. Here’s photos!

Mike swears he doesn’t give a flip about anything to do with my chickens. Then why in the heck was he sitting there at midnight waiting for the temps to get where they need to be so I could put in the eggs???? LOL

Gregory checks out the incubator situation nearly as much as I do! :0)

Pardon the mess in my sewing room.  I am in the middle of re-arranging things to make room for my chicks and the incubator!