Candling

Tonight I am going to try candling the eggs.  It basically means I'll be shining a bright light behind the egg to see if anything is inside.  It may be too early but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.  I found signs of chicks quite early in my last ones so two days may be enough but I might have to try again in the coming days.

Apparently my chicks are going to be black.  Which leads me to post this from www.failblog.org.

It's been a long time

I don't remember why I stopped blogging.  One of the few things I could blog about for hours was my chickens.  So let's give you an idea of what has happened since I stopped.

When we got back from a trip this summer we found poor BB's remains in the yard.  Someone driving too fast on our road had hit her.  How do I know they were going to fast?  Well our road is a no exit road with tons of kids, pets, and potholes on it.  Oh and chickens.  Anyway some people go way too fast and those same people who do, also complain about my birds.  Even the neighbours said, you'd be an idiot not to see the giant birds in the road.  So BB was dead and I was sad.  My red sex links flourished and grew up.  They turned into wonderful layers and integrated with the flock nicely... except Vincent.  Alabama had become the leader of the flock and she wasn't ready to give that up.  She didn't take kindly to Vincent's approaches and would not mate with him period.  So we separated him and gave him away.  Oh and Mackie.. Matthew's kindness to her was also folly.  As much as we wanted her to live and survive, something was weird about her.  She had no wattles or comb, at least not developed and she was half the size of the others.  She held her own but eventually, when she was afraid she'd faint.  One day my little  brother came over and accidentally surprised them.  Later that night I found Mackie was not in the coop.  I went out in the woods and found her there, still warm, where she had had a heart attack in fear of the stranger wandering the yard.  It was probably for the best.  As sweet and as peppy as she was, she was not a healthy bird.

We've got 12 Easter Egger eggs that I just put in the incubator tonight.  I hope we get some chicks... so here's the blog again.  It's been brought back to life!

Vincent before he turned into a jerk but once he was a grown up.

The gang before they were fully grown.

Some of the original babies dustbathing.

Mackie before she died.  See, no wattles or comb.

Shoshana at the front and Bridget at the back.  You can see they developed beautiful feathers.  They're grey underneath, have black tail feathers and are a dark brown everywhere else.

The Easter Eggers I just put in the incubator!

My boys!  My kitten grew bigger than Fawkes.  Giacomo and Fawkes are great pals, despite the five year age difference.

And Belle and Matthew are as sweet as ever :)