Chickens- Pictures from Around Our Yard

The title of this post is the title of this video! Enjoy! (PS- there is even a pic of the newest Silkie babies in there at the end!!)

Geese and Cochins

Good-Bye
It's time to say good-bye to the goslings... The rightful owners have come back from Florida (YES!!) and will be picking up the goslings, maybe sometime today. I will miss them, but it will be 5 less mouths to feed... And water... And clean up after..... (Of course it's not their mouths that I clean up after.)

Newbies (Chicks)
You know that with that title, we've gotten ourselves into something! We went to this guys place, looking to buy Cochin chicks. He's crazier than us! In a good way! He's got chicks in his garage (along with 'poults'), and a barnful of animals: Guineas, goats, rabbits, llamas or alpacas, peafowl, quail, Chukar, horses, dogs out back, and a barn cat!! Phew! Even though he's crazy, I think I'd love to have most of those..... Even the Guineas! Anywho, he had barred Cochins, splash Cochins (my fav), and buff Cochins. We bought one mixed breed (which is buff, but has barring and dots of black), one splash (mine), and my sister bought what she hopes is a buff rooster, for her buff hen. They're with the other chicks that we hatched (for now). Aren't we crazy?

~chickengirl~

Unexpected

The most unexpected thing happened to me today (hence the title). I was feeding and watering the setting hen, Butterscotch, and I thought that I heard peeping. "Ooh," I thought, "maybe an egg is hatching!" I looked under her and was shocked to find that the noise was coming from a little Silkie chick!!! I nearly shouted, but instead went and showed my sister. Then I ran back and checked for more and found another! They are so cute. If you didn't know, we put some Silkie eggs that the Silkie hen had been setting on underneath Butterscotch. I didn't see any more pips in the eggs, and I only found those two chicks. They seem perfectly fine! I just can't believe they hatched right under our nose. I've been checking every now and then to see if there were any signs of hatching. I wonder how old they are; they're all fluffed up, and yet the egg tooth is still on both of them. Probably just a day or two. I'll get some pictures soon.

~chickengirl~

Geese

Here are some pics of the goslings!

All five together.
Audrey, my fav.

~chickengirl~

New Coop

Lots has happened since the last post. I guess I'll start with this: We let the chicks out into the pen while we built a new coop. The coop will temporarily be for the chicks, then for the Silkies. Here's a video (I wanted to put HSM "Breaking Free", but couldn't get a hold of the sound track):

Also, last Tuesday our friends won two chicks in a drawing at a 4-H farm day, and since they're going on vadation for two weeks we ended up with them. So our baby chick count has gone from 3 to 5 PDQ (pretty darn quick). Plus, the same friends found some abandoned baby geese near their house, and took them in. Again, vacation got in the way, and we are now the foster parents of 5 baby Canadian geese for 2 weeks. I'll try to get some pictures, because they are SO cute!! Their names are Audrey, Lucy, Peep, Giselle, and Sweetheart.

~chickengirl~

Breaking Out 2

Here is my video of the Silkie chick hatching. I also have some pictures of the AWPR(Ameraucna/White Plymouth Rock) . I don't have any video clips, though. Sorry!

~chickengirl~

More...and More!!

The Ameraucana/White Rock egg hatched yesterday. It's so cute; it looks like a White Rock, but has an Ameraucana's comb! The Silkie is doing fine. another Silkie egg was hatching this morning, and my sister and I stayed out there for a long time. We were afraid that the hen would break the egg, because she was moving around so much, so we had it under a heat lamp. I put it under the hen for about 20 seconds. A huge mistake. She accidentally trampled on it, breaking part of the egg shell. The chick was still moving inside, thankfully! Finally, after a 20-30 minute struggle (both the egg and me, too!), the little chick hatched. We nick-named it "Lucky". We were so happy that it made it out okay! We put about 8 more Silkie eggs under Butterscotch the RIR, and she still has about three eggs from the other batch. We are very un-experienced with hatching chicks, so we really just threw a bunch of eggs that we thought were fertile under, some maybe even on different days. The 3 chicks are now in our upstairs bathroom. The AWPR (I made that up for the cross) is named "Chloe", because that was her dad's name, before he turned into Cole. The 'lucky' Silkie is May-Day (because it was born on May Day, and when there's trouble, you shout "mayday!"), and it's nickname is May. The first Silkie is stuck. I want to name it April, so we'll have April and May, but my sister thinks otherwise.... I think she wants it to be Fluffy? If it's a boy, I think I should call it Louie Vaton! Well, if you have any ideas, leave them in a comment on this post! I'll put more pictures of the other hatches tomorrow, or at least I'll try!!!

~chickengirl~