Babies!

Welcome the Babies!

This is what our incubator looked like when we left for hiking Sunday morning.  By the time we came home that night (after our 4.9 mile hike that was really 7 miles) we had little pips in the eggs, by Monday morning we had several babies out of their shells!  So exciting!

 

 

 In this picture you can see a few of the eggs have "pips" or little holes where the chicks are starting to peck out.

 I had no idea it was such a long process!  We had 10 eggs in the incubator and one died in the egg and one never pipped, so we ended up with 8 chicks.  It took over 24 hours for all those babies to push out of the eggs.

 This is a picture of the first two out of the eggs once they were almost all the way dry.  They headed straight for the food.  After all that effort and then hanging out in the incubator for 12 hours, they were hungry!

 Once a chick has hatched it is best to leave it in the incubator till it is dry and strong.  We had to move a few out early and put them under the heat lamp.  They were so excited about the other chicks hatching that they would run over and jump in the egg and the poor baby who was working so hard to get out of the egg.  A few were so boisterous that we were afraid they would trample the newly hatched chicks.

 This is blackberry hatching.  She (we think) is our only black chick.  What was interesting was that her egg, each time we candled it was perfectly dark inside--we could see nothing going on  inside.  With the others we could see veins and then movement and it was very exciting.  We kept looking at this one and saying "Well, lets just put it back in the incubator until next time and see if we see anything different."  It figures she would be a black chick!

 Here are the first 5 all fluffed up in in the brooding box.  So what is with the rocks in the dish?  Well newborn chicks have narcolepsy.   That is the best way to describe it.  They fall asleep anywhere, anytime, on anything.  The rocks are in the water dish to prevent a narcoleptic chick from drowning.  Trust me, if someone had not warned me ahead of time, I would have freeked out the first time I saw it happen.  They look dead!

 

 

 

 This is the very last chick hatching.  We call her Cotton because she is so little and the lightest colored.  See that other chick, she hatched several hours earlier, and while not dry is very excited that someone else is joining the party.  She was cheeping and jumping all over the place.  It truly is a miracle that chicks survive past the first day!

 These three are week old chicks.  We bought them from the feed store, because well, I couldn't resist!  They are India (the cinnamon colored-she is a Rhode Island Red), Sunrise (she is the yellow, a Buff Orpington,) and Snowflake (the black--she will be black and white mottled, like snow in the night sky--get it--she is a Silver Lace Wyandotte).  They  needed to be separated from the babies, because they were a little aggressive in their welcome of the babies.  Now that the babies are a few days old we are able to introduce most of them and they are all getting along.

 These are the last ones hatched,  cotton is the wettest one.

 And a kitty update.  Aren't they sweet.  They have turned into the sweetest, most fun, most tolerant cats on the planet.  We love them.

 See what I mean about tolerant.  How many cats do you know who would let a 4 year old boy sleep on them?

 Anne and India.  Anne named her.

  Ryan and the chickies--he was so excited and is soooo gentle with them.  I did not know my ruff and tumble boy could be so delicate with the babies.

 Like Megan's morning do?  I want to video her sleeping so I can see what she does in her sleep to end up with hair like this in the morning.

 Cotton

 

 

 Blackberry

 

 

 I'm pretty sure that is Ginger.

 

 

Katie and Sunrise.  Katie named her.

 

They are so fun and so cute, and not much work gets done around here before everyone is gathered around the babies stroking soft fluff because soon it will be gone.  Already they are getting their wing feathers and cute little tail feathers.