Um...

The "fart egg" strikes again!

OK back to business, girls!

RIP little one

The little one didn't make it.

After two days of seeing it suffering and in pain, slowly dying, we had to make the difficult decision of giving it eternal peace instead of prolonging the agony.

I will never pull one out of the shell again.

Mom Nature knows best.

RIP sweet baby :-(

Here are the peeeeeeeeeepers!

In all, 8 sweet babies hatched on my birthday (Jan 26th), which makes them two days old now. They all have the same father (an EE cross) except for one chick, and I've no idea who the moms are - some are pure Easter Eggers, others are half sexlink/half EE hens but the babies all hatched from green eggs.

Basically they are all mutts but IMO

they make the prettiest birds!

Here are a few of the cutest babies!

This is the last one born, a bit of a surprise actually -

and he/she is huge!

Same chick, different view -

it's silver, cream, black and dark copper...

Super le cute fluffball!

Another of my favorites,

look at those stunning colors!

Blue/steel grey with a white tummy,

a white beard and white under the eyes.

I've never seen one like this before :)

Same chick, she needs a name don't you think? ;-)

This one is the oddball,

hatched from a white egg

so mom is a white leghorn and dad

is a blue laced red wyandotte.

We call her Dottie, but with my luck

it'll be a Spot!

I adore this little cutiepie,

she is cream colored

with a silver back and a copper hat!

And lookit the giant beard she has! :-D

Still the same chick,

because she's just so photogenic!

Another fat fluffball,

looks like a bearded chipmunk - lol!

This is one of the silkies born on Jan 20th,

she has craaaazy feathers growing in -

kinda curly and silly lookin'!

Her dad has some frizzle genes so that explains it!

I'll post more pics next week...

One of the new chicks isn't doing well and I doubt it will survive the next few days, so sad... It was too weak to hatch on its own, I helped it and everything seemed fine but now it's going downhill. Weak, breathing fast, droopy wings, not eating or drinking, eyes closed most of the time... Poor thing. I have to let nature take its course, I should have not touched that egg in the first place.

Please learn from my mistake!

Awe peepers!

The babies are four days now and still as cute as ever!

One of them, Little Oliver Mongfoot, had a crooked toe that needed some straightening so he's wearing a little slipper for a couple of days and being a very good sport about it ;-)

OK fine, we have no idea which ones are boys and which ones are girls but it's still fun to pretend like we do. I'm hoping for more girls than boys but with my rotten luck that won't happen... We can only keep one boy from this hatch so crossing fingers daddy Tyler did a good job and gave us girls!

The three other babies look like this, light grey and cream. 

No idea what they'll look like growing up 

but it'll be interesting and they can only be adorable since, 

after all, they are sweet silkies :-)

A day later...

And voilà, here are the four musketeers!

Amazing how different they look when dry, eh?

I call them the Charlie Chaplins,

they are soooo quiet and hilarious with their

little pitter patter antics!

Seriously, the BEST chicks evar!

Silkies, I love thee :-)

First chick is here!!

Yaaaaay!

I'm so relieved!

Here she is, folks!

It took a full two days from cheeping to full hatch,

what a long journey!

She's drying out in the incubator now,

encouraging her little sisters to hatch too.

If all goes well by tonight or tomorrow morning

we should have three more babies - 

please send us your good joojoo!

Happy faces

I took a short video of my easter egger girls yesterday 

(this group is one of my three). 

They are 12 girls + 1 rooster in all, in about 200 sqf of space. 

For the hens you will see 7 easter eggers, 1 black cochin/brahma mix, 

2 polish/leghorn mixes and 2 blue laced red wyandottes.

Yes, that rooster is indeed the famous Jericho!

The sweet one that I hand raised since he was a day old...

The one who attacked me out of the blue a few weeks ago

and whom I beat half to death with a big plastic spoon.

I'm soooo glad he's OK -

Trust me, this will never happen again!

Respect, peeps, respect :-)

Lockdown!

Hurrah, already lockdown time for the future chickies!

Well, hopefully most will hatch fat and healthy... you never know what can go wrong even when things are looking perfectly all right :-/

Let's see if we get any wee ones in three days.

*please pretty please*

I had to leave the automatic turner in the incubator as there are a bunch of eggs only due in nine days, hopefully the increased humidity over the next few days won't harm them... it's my first time dealing with a "rolling hatch" so we'll see what happens.

The soon-due eggs are safely tucked away in a corner of the incubator floor, had to be ingenious about this. Yay for removable turning trays and husbands that figure this stuff out! LOL

Will post an update soon!

Is this an awesome pic, or what?

Tee hee!

Yeeessssss!!!

Just candled the eggs and there are definitely five little silkie babies developing nicely in there, scheduled to hatch in 10 days! I'm elated!!

Plus one more silkie due January 26th along with 8 to 10 easter eggers!

OK there are NO guarantees that the chicks will hatch or survive if they do hatch so I need to take a deeeep breath here and not get too excited.

But still.

EeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeEEEee! :-D

Wish me luck!!

I'm candling the eggs tomorrow or Tuesday to see if any of the 5 original silkie eggs show signs of developing babies or if they are all quitters... and how many of the newly added eggs show veining (if any at all - let's not jinx it!).

Will keep you posted!

*crossing fingers and toes for sweet chicks to hatch on my birthday!*

I wish my hens did this! LOL

Update on the hatch

Boooooo :-(

I candled the silkie eggs last night (Day 5) and had to throw out 21(!) non-fertile eggs, I could cry! That leaves me with only five "maybe viable" eggs in the incubator, three of which I think are quitters due to possible blood rings.

So, I'll be lucky to get one, maybe two chicks IF the rest of the incubation goes well, IF the babies develop normally and IF they hatch and IF they survive the first 48 hours.

I'm sooo bummed out.

The two green eggs are still a mystery, their shell was too dark for me to see anything. With my luck they're also sterile :-/

Sooooo....

I'm going to attempt a dangerous maneuver.

I collected eggs from my two other flocks yesterday and today and will attempt to set those too, even if the current incubation is on day 6. A bit scary since I risk messing things up if any of the current eggs do hatch but I gotta do something. Hatching a lone chick would be a nightmare.

Call me crazy, cuz I am.

Oh well.

How to tell if your chickens are spoiled rotten

When they get this for breakfast:

Yeah, spoiled I tell you! :-D

Future peepers!

The babies went in on December 30th!

Please send us some good fertility vibes,

this hatch is super important to me

and I'm afraid to mess it up...

Am having problems with calibrating my two thermometers :-(

Babies! We want sweet fuzzbutts in 3 weeks!!