Category: hatching

Australorp, Buff Orpington, carrots, Cream Legbar, Creme de la Creme melon, eggs, Fava beans, French Copper Maran, grape vine, hatching, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Icelandic chicken, sweet peppers

Confession- Mini Farm Update

Olof
I have a confession to make. I just put seeds in the ground last week and I can’t remember where I put them or what it was that I planted. I just remember that it put down squash, cucumbers and some TamDew melons. Why you ask? I realized that it was JUNE!!!! and I hadn’t gotten these things in the ground. I had room but it all ended up all over the place because my kids were yelling and it was bed time and and and and…………… I guess I will just see how that goes.

Here are some photos from the ‘Farm’.

Buff the Buff Orpington dust bathing in the heat trying to stay cool

Mathilda the Australorp being careful not to get caught. 

Chipmunck the Cream Legbar and Fluffybum the French Copper Maran were not wanting their photo taken today.

No eggs yet but any day now!

Fava beans, Carrots, and red okra.

Creme de la Creme melon

Tomatoes

Tomato flowers

Grape plant

Sweet pepper plant

Bees buzzing in and out. Have to add the second hive body tomorrow! Exciting!

one of my veggie beds. Look at all of the collard greens and brocoli and Kale.

Just finished fencing the porch off from chickens so that we can use it and bleaching and scrubbing the deck. 

Icelandic chicken eggs in the incubator! I’m excited and hope I have learned my lesson.

The bees are busy, my garden is really doing well with what I have planted and the chickens are doing great and I hope to see the big girls start laying soon.

I got Icelandic chicken eggs from an Icelandic girl in Washington state. I hope that they are thriving in there and that I get at least one hen.

The back porch has been fenced off and cleaned so that the family can use it again. It had gotten really gross after the chickens realized that there was cat food on the deck. They love that stuff even though they have plenty of organic chicken feed and free range of the backyard.

I will take some photos of the bees when I open up the hive tomorrow and show you how much work they have done. There was so much honey in there and my queen was laying and there was brood! I’m so excited about how well things are going. If only I could keep up with mowing the backyard too. It’s a mess. I need some sheep or a horse borrowed for a day or two to eat all of this grass.

What is going on in your backyard?

chick, chicken, chickens, egg, eggs, farm, Farmer´s market, hatching, hobbies, homestead, homesteading, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Keeping Chickens, killed, loss, mother, sustainability

Sad and Crushed.

Olof

My mamma nerves are raw tonight.

A little over 3 weeks ago I went to the farmers market to pick up some eggs. When using set eggs I saw that they were fertile eggs. So on a whim I put 2 of them in my small little incubator. I thought since they had been refrigerated that there would be nothing of the eggs and from my reading on the web it said that they would most likely not hatch but I was wanting to give it a try.

Ten days later I candle the eggs and see that one had started developing. I thought this very cool and had this great blog post brewing in my head about how you can hatch out eggs from the farmers market at only pennies on the chick where they would be good layers since they come from stock used for laying.

Anyhow, fast forward to today, day 23 of the chick being in the egg and the normal cycle 21 days to hatch day and I thought the worst, that the baby chicken had died. Crack open the top where the air sack was and to my surprise I see movement. I instantly feel horrible. Baby was still in there and alive and clearly just behind because, duh… I put COLD eggs into the incubator and it took a few days for the temp to get just right.

I hurry up and put the egg back in the incubator and go online to look for guidance. With the information I had given of baby being on day 23 someone told me to pip the egg (making a hole in the membrane) so that the baby could breath. I try and it starts bleeding! I’m horrified! I feel so guilty and dumb. Poor baby I should have just left it alone to do its natural thing like I believe in for all healthy births! I watch until I notice that baby is not moving anymore. My heart sinks. I leave the egg in the incubator until the boys go to bed to investigate. I poke at it and no movement. I watch for anything but the color now is off too. Finally, I come to terms that the baby is no longer alive in the egg and I crack it open to find a beautiful baby that died because I could not wait longer.

Perfectly formed. All the toes and nails and everything there. Just me being a bad, ignorant mother hen. Had I given the baby a couple of more days to finish absorbing the yoke and pip itself then I would have been welcoming a new member to my flock of chickens instead of feeling loss and guilt tonight.