Peeps!

We started with 16 eggs in a homemade incubator.  After the first week, one egg stopped developing for unknown reasons.  The other 15 grew fast!  We marked the growth of the air sack, rotated the eggs, maintained the temperature and humidity, and waited.  Chicken eggs incubate for 21 days.  On day 18 one of our eggs pipped.  The pip is the first crack in the egg.  The chick pokes a hole with the tiny tooth at the end of its beak.  This pip means the baby can now breath air from outside the shell.  It can take 24 hours or more to hatch from the first sign of a pip.  This first chick made its pip at the wrong end of the egg though, it was breech! 

See the pip on the right side of the egg on the left?  A chick should pip through the air sack at the wide end.  This little guy got turned around somehow.  Often breech chicks can't get a good enough grip on the inside of the egg to push out.  Then they suffocate and die.  We left this little one for 24 hours monitoring to see if it was still alive.

Soon the egg next to the first pipped too

After 24 hours, I was worried about the first little guy, so I helped him out a bit.  I peeled back a tiny bit of the shell and she poked her beak through right away!

I helped her out a bit more after several hours and then she did the rest on her own!

Hello baby!

Sister joined her soon after

Hatching is hard work, they needed a rest.  Notice the pip in the next egg?  The stars written on the shell were where we guessed they would pip.  We were pretty close with all of them except the breech chick

We spent a lot of hours watching these eggs jump and bump around waiting for them to emerge!

By the end of day 20 we had 6 fluffy peeps!  2 chicks died as they were hatching, not uncommon and nothing we could do about it.

On day 22 the 6 were joined by another tiny peep, likely a rooster by the little dot of white on his head.  The other 6 eggs never even pipped.  Again, not unusual, and nothing we could do about it.  The chicks and eggs that didn't make it will be buried in our pet graveyard

We can easily tell who the father of most of the chicks is.  We had 2 roosters, but only one of them had feathery legs!  Well done Fred!

They're imprinting on us

This is the overdue peep.  See his white spot and white wing tips?

Each chick has different markings and we can easily tell them apart

Each of us has a favorite!

Their first outdoor adventure

They stayed pretty close

So soft!

Welcome to our family little peeps!

Keeping busy

There is certainly no shortage of excitement around here!

The children gathered some frog eggs in a bucket

There were two bunches of eggs.  One of them was farther along than the other (right)

Our first hatched tadpoles!

Our first meal of wild fiddleheads harvested from our property!  So yummy!

Sprouting some sweet potato slips for the garden

The children are very excited to finally be using the trampoline they got for Christmas

About 300 bulbs of garlic planted last fall sprouting.  Can't wait for the garlic scapes!  This garden is protected from deer by some fishing line hung at various heights

A work in progress.  An incubator built from 2 old aquariums and a heat lamp.  We wanted to build it without spending any money, so the temperature is controlled by hand.  We really should have it on a thermostat.  We have to manually adjust the lid to vent it to keep the temperature in an acceptable range.  It takes almost constant monitoring.  I would be surprised if these eggs are all viable by the end of the 21 days of incubation.  In fact, I would be happy if even a few hatched.  So far though, I have been able to see growing embryos in almost all 16 eggs!

Thermometer, hygrometer, wet sponge for humidity, wire mesh for air circulation, beautiful fertile eggs from our own chickens 

And our biggest excitement!  This will be our new house!  The building plans are finished, the building permit has been approved, and the foundation is staked out!  Phoenix (left) is standing in the laundry/ mud room.  Zander (middle) is standing in the pantry.  Finnlee (right) is standing in the dining room.  In the back, you can see my parent's house.  Its not done yet, but they are already living in the basement.

Looking to the road from what will be my kitchen window.  The view will be much improved once the mobile home is gone.  You can see the chicken coop to the right

Looking left from what will be the front door.  The coop is just to the left

Looking right from what will be the front door.  That bit of red at the right is the newly painted shed Chris built a year and a half ago.  Next step, heavy machinery!