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!!

Silkie babies!

Well, these three little boys are four months old now and are ready to go... Looks like some nice lady is willing to take them, just need to call her today to discuss.

Kinda sad that out of five chicks, four turned out to be boys :-(

They are just SO cute and adorable, why can't they be girls!

Waaaaah!

I have 28 eggs collected so far for the incubation I'm starting in two days - so exciting! I've no idea how many are fertile, am crossing fingers to end up with a few sweet chicks at least... My friend who sold me Tyler last year said he sired more girls than boys so it will be a nice test on my end!

More news soon :)

Merry Christmas!

Jericho seems fine, I'm soooo relieved!

One of his eyes is a bit bloodshot and his comb seems swollen and lop-sided but other than that he's back to normal...

We had a nice cuddle and exchanged apologies.

Amen and thank goodness!

Now Christmas can be celebrated in peace :-)

This morning...

My sweet and gentle roo, Jericho, viciously attacked me completely unprovoked. Flogged me, spurs flying, trying to rip my hand off through my glove (I have the bruise to prove it).

I pushed him back three times before I completely lost my temper and beat him unconscious with a big plastic spoon (which broke in half).

I wanted to kill him.

Only when I saw him laying there, eyes swollen shut, bleeding, trying to breath with bubbles gurgling out of his beak did I come to my senses - oh my god what had I done.

I panicked, picked him up, couldn't stop wailing, ran outside with him in my arms to get my husband, my poor roo was dying and we had to put him out of his misery, I failed him, what the hell just happened there...

However the cold air must have revived Jericho as he started to open his eyes a bit, looking around, dazed and confused, his poor crest smashed and swollen...

After a few minutes he seemed to be OK so we put him back in the pen with his girls, he's walking around fine - tail up - but he's not touching food nor water and will not roost up on the pallet with his girls, which worries me.

He either has blurred vision or brain damage, for sure I gave him a mighty good concussion...

I feel utterly horrible, sad, guilty, remorseful - how can I do this to one of my pets, let alone one of my best ones? What the hell happened? I've had this boy since he was a day old last February 16th, he's never been anything but sweet and submissive and kind - and now today, out of nowhere, I was the enemy that had to be destoyed? WTF?

I over-reacted and he almost paid with his life.

I still don't know if he'll be OK or not.

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a mom. :-(

The circle of life :)

As comes death, comes life to replenish the energy cycle... 

and feed this mama hen's love of cute little baby peepers!

Come on, how cute are these?

Babies from my first incubation last March :)

Yes, I succumbed once again to the temptation and will be firing up an incubation of silkie eggs on Dec 30th! I've started collecting and rotating the eggs, not sure how many I'll end up with but it won't be that many I should think... Although the past two days I've collected 9 of them. Ooops.

I have a nice big forced-air Hovabator with turning tray, which I've used 3 times since I got it for my birthday last January. I'm totally way overdue :-D

But mostly, I want to secure some babies from Tyler - should anything ever happen and I lost him without having his progeny, I would never forgive myself, I'd be doubly heart-broken. He is truly one-of-a-kind, my absolute favorite of my entire flock. Hims my crazy lil'sweetheart, remember this video I posted of him last summer?

Awe, now I miss the little bugger,

have to wait until tomorrow morning

to "chat" with him :-D

Anyhoo. I've checked a few of the eggs in that pen and they're fertile, and he's the only roo mating with the hens (he is The Boss) so I assume any babies that hatch - god willing - will be little half-Tylers.

Moms are white silkies and white silkie/sultan mixes. 

Should be so! Cute!

I'll update once the incubation is on the way. Wooo!

Here we go again...

The time has come to bid our sweet Ember farewell, and send her over the rainbow bridge... I'm a terrible mama, she's been suffering for months but I just haven't been able to let her go.

She's visibly in agony now and we have no choice :-(

Her abdomen has been swollen like a water balloon fit to burst, she's been like this since last spring and I don't know what it is or how to fix it. I figured as long as she was roosting with the girls, free-ranging and eating normally I'd let her be.

The past two days she's been waddling around like a penguin, I can see her great discomfort with every tiny step she takes. She cannot roost anymore, she looks so tired... and she has a huge tumor on the back of her neck that the other hens occasionally pick at, she bleeds everywhere, it's horrible.

I adopted Ember in August 2009, I was her 3rd home and I have given her the best possible life all this time - so why does it hurt so much to say goodbye?

I hate this part of pet ownership, I really do.

And I'm angry at myself for hurting so much.

Thank you Vegas, my dear husband, for being the brave one - taking a life may be easy for some, but it's hell for us.

RIP my sweet angel...

You are loved, now and forever.