Calamity Acres Hobby Farm

So I got up at midnight, or 2 AM or something.... and went out in the living room and listened for a minute... Then, I just had to turn the light on.

I said "Hey, what's up, you guys?" and little heads lifted and turned towards me.  They were pretty pooped out, so I turned the light back out and went to bed.

Out of the seven eggs in the incubator, five hatched, which I think was pretty good for the first time I used the Brinsea.  I think the next time, even though there are seven spots on the egg turner for seven eggs, I'll set four or five only, so the chicks have plenty of room to hatch and move around.  We left the other two eggs in today just to see what would happen, but actually, all the eggs usually hatch within six hours of each other, so these eggs, though they feel "heavy" probably have dead chicks in them.  They'll go out tomorrow morning if unhatched.

If I were hatching large standard eggs, not bantams, I would not put more than three or four for sure.

And here are the little stinkers as we put them in a shoe box this morning out in the henhouse...they spent the day hearing their buddies, but isolated, while they got their legs under them and fluffed out.  Yes, they were under a warming light.

And tonight, I put them in with their sisters (and hopefully, very few brothers) and showed them were the water and feed are.

In this picture, you will see three of the new little ones in the good old feeding frisbie...and one of the others standing in the yellow feeder.  If you notice, there are five porcelain D'Uccle chicks along the wall of the trough.  Note the newly hatched chick in the frisbie.... I think we have ONE purebred porcelain out of our hatch!  This will be a direct son or daughter of Fancy and April, my two adult porcelains.  If a son, he will be going to some friends who would like a porcelain rooster, along with a female.  The porcelains were all sold "straight run", or unidentified as to sex at a day old.

The larger chicks are all pullets.

I saw Lilly harassing something out in the grass tonight by the pasture gate, and went to see what it was...

I wonder if those are some of my missing eggs in him?

On a happier note, Michelle at Boulderneigh on my sidebar is celebrating her 1500th blogpost!  To do so, she is having a drawing on her blog for some nice prizes... you can find the information on her post here. Michelle also has a great dressage/horse blog, which you can find here called "Dances with Horses".