Excitement, followed by sad findings....

The excitement I have for my lil chicks to be born is overwhelming! As is the excitement I get before I candle my eggs.

To be able to see the developing stages is amazing.

I began with 25 eggs, after a few days I decided to candle them for the first time and found two eggs that seemed to not have been fertile. Which is fine, I knew that not all of them were and that a few of these would not make it to hatching, that is just life. I was thrilled to see that two of the eggs I was positive would not be fertile for lack of seeing my rooster "get" those particular hens, were indeed fertile and developing! One was a white egg from my white Leghorn girl (cleverly named Ivory) and the other was from one of our first hens an Ameraucana (named after her Black Beard)

Unfortunately, after candling a few times I found the big blue egg had died. Sad but again it was OK. I was the most hopeful for my lil white egg because my rooster is a beautiful black Cochin with great feathered legs and I really wanted to see what would turn out from them combined.

Yesterday I was candling and was able to see my white egg baby move for the first time, she wiggled and twitched and fluttered in there as I watched on. At least she seemed to be keeping herself entertained! At this time in the game I had come down to 18 eggs that seemed to have life, although of that I had 4 that were questionable.

Well tonight as I candled them, I did as I always do and looked at my white egg first and here is what I saw.........

If a developing egg is not something you are used to seeing than let me explain.
This is a no longer living baby chick. What you want to see is the upper part of the egg (well in this pick) being pretty dark and only really being able to see a few even darker spots (as the baby) and an amazing spider webbing of veins. Although I can see a few veins, they are thin and no longer pumping also the baby was not moving.

To tell you the truth I should not have let myself get that excited about any of the eggs, it would have been a lot less upsetting. But sadly I am not that type of person.

So I continued to candle my eggs and found that I am down to 9 eggs that have moving, living chicks in them.

This is a blue egg, so it is very hard to see inside.

This is a very light brown egg, as you can see there are veins. At the bottom, the bright yellow area (from the light) is the air sac. The very dark area is the chick and boy was she bouncing around in there.

Not sure why this one loaded sideways, but again good lil growing chick in this one as well!

I will keep my head up as I always try (dose not always work) and I can always try this again. I have my fingers crossed for the rest of these eggs.

5 free chicks for me!

I have noticed that between taking care of the kids, husband, animals and the house, I don't put up many blogs about my animal adventures or at least as many as I should.

On one of my many trips picking up free chickens that I found on Craigslist, the woman I got them from told me to check out this feed store. Not only do they deliver for free and only use things from local farmers their prices are not to bad. Just so happens that they were having a free chick event (not the kind of "Chick" that the Chief was hoping for ;o) So while I was in the proses of building my first attempt at an incubator, I went and picked up my 5 free chicks on March 10th. I ordered 3 Barred Rocks and 2 Road Island Reds which just made my urge to incubate my own eggs just that much worse!

I turned my not so great home made "incubator" into a mini brooder for the first week or so. As they get bigger I will move these lil fluff balls into a large tote.

                                  I am not the only fan of our cute little peepers.

It gives you a small heart attack when you see your baby chicks sleeping for the first time, looked like I had a hand full of dead babies!

These two are my most curious lil "girls", any time I tap on the glass they come running up to see what it is. The other three could care less.

So I was doing my normal obsessing over taking pictures of things, this time it was my chicks. When I noticed that one of my RIR chicks has what looks like eye liner. I wanted to take a pic of it to show you guys, but as I tried taking her pic there was this black fuzz that appeared in the right side of the pic.

 I took another and yet again, the black fuzz on the right but it took up more of the pic this time.

(Notice the eye liner? I think I will call her Cher. Why I have not a clue, but that is what came to mind)
As I zoomed out to see what it was I realized that some one is liking the camera attention and wants to be in all the pictures.

       I love the look she is giving me!  "Yes, I am here. You may take my picture, cause I am so fuzzy."

So I leave you tonight with thoughts of lil fuzzies running around peeping joyusly.

And as a side note, I did candle my eggs tonight, but my camera was not cooperating with me. I will try again in another day or so.

Incubation update!

This message is brought to you by very sore hands and even worse arms and leggs!

Finaly finnished the turkey coop, but that is a post of pics for tomorrow.

Dun dun duuuuu,  Today is day three. I candled almost half of my eggs and all 12 of them are developing into lil baby dark spots and I saw definite vains in two of them. Oh I am so very excited.

I am even happier because the one egg that I thought would not be fertial, on acount of not seeing my Rooster get to my White Leghorn momma, is very fertial! I wish it was easier to see into the darker eggs, waiting to see if my blue and green eggs are fertial too...... Guess I'll have to wait untill I think day 10. Oh my Holly crap I am on pins and needles, I can't wait for 18 more days!

Definatly will make sure that i take pics next time I candle. I was just so excited to see behind the locked door to the baby room.

Anyone elts seen inside of a devolping egg? It is amazing!

Start the 21 day count. Incubating chicken eggs!

For the last few days I have been very busy building and building. House for new turkeys, coop expantion, and new goat area!  I will save some of those for another day.

The one I am most excited about is my incubator.

This chicken "Math" has really begun to add up at my house. I started off with 5 hens just after the new year and now I have 25 hens and 2 roosters. Alas, I am done buying laying hens. Now I am moving on to chicks and incubating.

                                           This is Lacey being checked out by Big Daddy Jaxx!

                 I really think there is a Love connection here. Hopefuly this results in some babies!

I have been getting alot of insperation from a site that I frequent often back yard chickens.

I decided to take a look at some ideas for a brooder as I am getting 5 chicks on the 10th, for free! But then I also went on to sneek a peek at all the amazing incubators that these brilliant people have come up with. I went threw the house and found that I had all the makings for an incubator made from one of my 10 gallon fish tanks. Before I really knew it I was gathering it all up and putting it together.

Here is where I was going to list the things needed to make my incubator and put pics, but I got tired that night and put this blog on hold and went to bed. I woke up the next morning and my temp shot up from 99 to 106 overnight. The reason for this is that about 15min before I went to bed I had truned the eggs and let the heat out. I wanted the temp to get back to 99 as fast as possible so I put a towel ontop of the lid to help. Well it helped the temp alright, but I forgot to take it off the lid and just went to bed.  So I had 31 cooked eggs in the incubator.

Well my wonderful husband, being the great Chief that he is, told me to just go and buy a real incubator. So I did! 25 eggs went into the battor lastnight around 5pm. That sets them up for an April fools day hatch! I am so very excited.

Thanks to a fellow blogger informing me that my colors on this here blog were to hard on the eyes I have changed them. I really hope that this makes it more pleasant to read! Again thank you for your input and sugestion.