The chicks have hatched!

In late February, we purchased 2 dozen fertile eggs from a local friend who raises Barred Rock chickens. With high hopes, we transported them over to another local friend who offered to incubate them for us.

20 eggs went into the incubator, but only 12 hatched and survived. One of them is a "runt" and I'm not sure how long it will survive, but it has made it over a week so far. 

I am not sure why there are batches where almost all hatch, and batches were barely any hatch, but it is definitely a lesson to be learned. That old saying "don't count your chickens before they hatch" was right on. We were expecting at least 15-18 chickens and were very surprised when only 12 did. 

But, we are thankful to have this many!  I cannot determine the gender of them yet, but I hope we have some pullets in there and not all roosters. We plan to keep all pullets and 1 roo. Aren't they cute?

Last week, I picked up 3 Easter Egger when we picked up our goats. More on them later!  I just love the green eggs my current Easter Egger gives us. Maybe I'll add an Ameracauna at some point for their beautiful blue eggs. 

Hatching our first chickens

In addition to our new meat birds, we are also going to be hatching out some eggs from a local friend. We went to see her farm on Monday, and picked up 24 fertilized barred rock eggs. 

(See that adorable feather?  That was on one of the eggs). My friend has 15 Barred Rock hens and 1 Rooster (he was gorgeous, too!) and we got to see them, and listen to his crow. She also has 4 cows and 2 pigs that we visited. So cool. 

We dropped these eggs off on Tuesday, and they should go into the incubator Wednesday. With any luck, we will have a nice batch of chicks in 3 weeks!  We plan on keeping 1 rooster, and approximately 5 hens - if there are that many. We'll see how it goes!  

Eggs!

It's mid-February and we are finally getting EGGS!  Oh how I have missed them. You don't realize how many eggs you go through until you are raising your own and refuse to buy them.

We have 4 out of 5 chickens laying now and get between 1-3 a day. I've been making breakfast burritos, muffins, etc. 

I can't help but wonder if the sprouts and fodder helped them begin to lay again. About 3 days after I began feeding it to them, Fluffy started laying. A week later Ruby and Belle began laying. I noticed Lucy's comb is red so hopefully she will start soon. 

Such a beautiful sight!