Broody?? And Eggs

So  Autumn laid an egg yesterday and had been sitting on it. Then when I moved it she rolled it a bit. But she didn't lay back on it, I think Jesse distracted her. But maybe by the next egg, she'll go broody for me. :) Still waiting for Rayna to start laying, she's so small that it may take her a bit longer. Also I'm not sure if she'd be fertile because she freaks out everytime Apollo tries anything. Autumn's and Aaron's eggs are still hatching, I was so excited when she started laying that I was putting in an egg everyday she laid, instead of holding them and putting them all in at once. So I've had and egg hatch just about everyday this week. I had three hatch earlier this week, one hatch last night and one that pipped last night. So I might have a little baby when I go home! And none of them have dark legs yet, which I was wondering about since Aaron had dark legs. I've also put in five more eggs, from Autumn who is with Jesse and Penny who is with Apollo! They should hatch on New Years, I'm so excited! I can't wait to see what they look like, these will be my first babies from Apollo, and I should get some frizzled babies from Jesse. I can't wait!

Changes

Well alot of things have changed. I got to more hens for the boys. Aaron is gone as well as all the Silkie babies, they'll be joining Cotton and Clara, in a nice big barn. Ashe will actually be joining them as well, which makes me sad, but he needs more room, he's only 3 months old and he's already 23oz and still growing. He's to rough with the Seramas, so I think it would be best if he was with some more his size. I also now have Jesse from Tiny Tots Seramas and three of her chicks. I also had 5 hatches, two smooths and a silkied hatched the first of December, the black smooth unfortunately died from vent blockage. But 2 more hatched yesterday and today, from Autumn (Abby) and Aaron. I will be posting pictures of the new additions shortely.

Bath Time!

So I bathed ALL of my Silkie babies, which took about 2 1/2 HOURS. Considering I washed one, wrapped it in a towl stuck it under a brooder lamp, washed the other, wrapped it put it under the brooder lamp. Dried the first I put under then the second and repeated for 14 chicks. But these are the pictures of them all fluffed up afterwards.

My 9 week old Blue/Lavender Split boy, Fuzzy

My 6week old (5 weeks at the time) Blue, Booboo

My Black Babies:

And this is Pepper, I'm not sure what he is...

These are my Partridge Babies Starting with Chipmunk

This is Tiffany's Baby:

This is my light Partridge

Duckie: Partridge or Black...I have no idea:

And my Buff:

Ashe

I'm so happy today!!! My little Ashe (half Silkie/half Serama) puffed up his chest, pointed his wings down and held his tail high and now he's up there crowing. I'm so proud of my boy! For a long while he had the stance of a silkie, and I always liked the stance of a Serama, so I am a very happy girl.

EGGS!!!

Tiffany's post just reminded me but, Autumn started laying her first eggs yesterday!!! Two eggs so far! :D!!!

Picture Update of the Silkie Babies

Sorry for the bright pictures everyone, my computer is older and darker, so I lightened the pictures and then I checked them on a newer computer and realized they are really washed out. This is my Fuzzy a 6 week old blue/lavender split when "he" was less than a week old

At 2 weeks

And at the Current 6 weeks

And these are my 3-4 week olds starting with Booboo my only other Blue, you can see why I call "him' Booboo if you look at his middle toe on his right foot.

Scraggely little thing isn't he/she

This is Ducky, I have no idea what coloration this would be he/she was born black, with the markings around the eyes, but now is getting red and tan coming in...

This is Pepper another "black" who is getting different colorations, a salt and pepper look, hence the name Pepper:

These are the rest of my "Blacks" that I haven't named yet

1.

2.

3. The biggest and the first to hatch

4.

5. This little one was trying to run away from the camera

6.

These are my Partridges starting with Chipmunk

This is my second Partridge

My thrid Partridge who kind of looks almost buff, but has chipumunk striping on his/her back

This one I belive to be buff, was born almost white and has no stripes

Selling??

So I've been getting a lot of crap from my Mom recently about the chickens. I'm an animal lover and for me animals are a happy chaos, where for her they're just chaos that she enjoys occasionally. She loves animals to, but animals are my life not hers. They make me happy, I love coming home to a house full of cats a dog and chickens. I LOVE the chickens so much. She does have a point, we are tight on money and we have animals that need shots and check ups, damn vet is so expensive. I don't understand the BIG problem because they are so cheap in comparison and they hardly take up any room and she doesn't have to be bothered with them. I pay for them, and clean there cages and do all the dirty work. Granted right now they are in the house and stinking it up. lol Little ones poop A LOT. But I definitely plan on building an outdoor coop, ajoined to a run. I don't want to give up any, but if I can't get any more then I'll have to give up one of my boys, because I can't have three boys and only two hens. But since I'm attached to two of them it'll have to be Aaron. Who is beautiful and I don't want to give up. They are so small and with a coop in the backyard I could easily house 10 chickens, 2 boys and 8 females would mean a lot of eggs. Which in the long run would save us a heck of a lot of money on eggs. One of the reasons I chose to get chickens. I could even sell the eggs to people who would want to hatch them. I think things would be better if I already had the coop, I don't think she'd have such a problem with it, but since they are in the house and they are mighty stinky. I guess I can see the issue. So I think Aaron will be going up for sale. :(

Sad News...

The little baby died a few minuets ago. I went upstairs and he/she was on it's back and when I picked it up he/she was limp, still alive, but limp. I held her for a while and she died. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to burry her.

This is her after she hatched..

Good/Bad News

Cotton and Clara will be leaving tomorrow for their new home, which I'm sure will make them very happy birds. :) And BooBoo's toe is looking better! It's no longer misshapen, I guess her/him walking on it, is straigtening it out, it's alittle bent now, but I think it will straighten out when he/she is older. But he/she is the runt of the brood.  But one of the partridges isn't doing so well, I found her/him laying down yesterday, seems to be lathargic not moving much, eats and drinks when he/she can, but seems to be something wrong. He/she is opening and closing her mouth alot and sleeping almost non-stop. Really worried. She seemed to be doing fine, but now seems to be sick. Hopefully she'll bounce back, but I'm worried she won't.

New Home

I have found a new home for Cotton! And Clara will go with him for company since they seemed to have bonded.  The teacher at my ceramics class Norma, used to own Roosters, they were her favorites and her husband at one time owned over a hundred birds. So I know they can take care of them. And they are very, very nice people. Norma is almost like an extra Grandmom. I know she'll love them. I'm going to take them up on Friday after they get everything set up and get food ready for them. Another wonderful thing is I see them every weekend, so I can get weekly updates of how they are doing and get some pictures from them as well. I think they'll love their new home, they'll have plenty of room to range together and nice warm place to sleep at night. So I am very happy for them, I hate to give up Clara though, she is a beautiful girl. So it's a bit bitter sweet.

Pictures!!

Meet the new babies:

Well I wanted black silkies...

This one I'm going to call BooBoo, cause it has a bad toe :( ^

This is my only white chick that hatched. ^

This is one of my partrages ^

This is another Partridge. ^

This is the whole group that I cam home to after work, ten with one that just hatched in the incubator and one hatching as I'm taking this. ^

These were the two still in the incubator while I was taking the pics, the one to the left was actually helping the little one in the egg out. So sweet... ^ The one on the left is chipmunk, he/she turned out gorgeous The other is another Partridge.  And at the moment I have two more blacks in the incubator and another about to hatch. Any body want some free silkies???

This is Chipmunk^

This is the one Chipmunk was helping hatch ^

Another black ^

This was the last to hatch ^

And this is the last one

Pipping!!!!!!!!!

4pm:
We have pipping!!!! Yay!!!!!!! *does a little dance* Hopefully we'll have a little chick here soon! 1 out of 20 so far, but I think I heard another pipping. AND I just got 8 Serama eggs in the mail!!!! Yay!!! :D

7:29pm
We have TWO pips!!! And the first is zipping!! It looks like maybe a blue or black silkie! Can't see the second one yet. Can't wait!!!

10pm
We have THREE pips!!! By morning I should have little chicks running around my incubator!

11pm
We have a baby!!! A little black silkie! *please be female, please be female*

8am
Another hatched about an hour ago, it looks like a blue, and another one just hatched and it looks like a Partridge... don't know how that got in there, but it's cute!! And we have five more pips! What am I going to do with all these chicks?! Will have pictures later, I've got to go to work. All the chicks are helping each other hatch, it's so CUTE!

6pm
We have ELEVEN chicks and three more pips out of 20!! Best hatch rate ever (for me)! I took group pics and individual pics. Which I'll have to do later after I get back from dinner. I LOVE chickens!!

This is the Group that I was able to take out of the Incubator, this is what I found when I came home.

This I think was the first to hatch.

More to come...

Chickens!!

Who knew chickens could be so addictive!! I had never even really seen many chickens or had any experience till I went into a Concord Pet store, and the manager had her Serama chicks in a home made brooder on the counter. She explained that they were the smallest chickens in the world and how they are great pets. Then I started doing some research on the breed and how to care for them and eventually I got an Incubator and some eggs. The first batch didn't hatch, some how even after 22 days, the chick was only about and inch long, I thought it was dead and cracked open the egg only to find out, it was still alive. :'(  So not a great experience, weirdest fluke I have ever heard of. I did more research after that and heard that you could keep eggs in the fridge for a week and still hatch them in an incubator and wondered if the eggs and just layed dormant until at the correct temperature (had problems with the incubator) Don't go by that though, I have no idea if that's true. Second time around I got a new better incubator, and again had trouble finding correct setting in order to keep the temperature at the right level (cause it was new, not cause it was bad) and then the hurricane came in and blew the electricity for hours and hours. I thought for sure none would hatch, but I kept turning the eggs and kept the temp and humidity at the right level, and low and behold when I came home from school there was a little chick hopping around my incubator. But sadly he was the only one. So again more eggs this time silkie eggs, because I loved the mix of the silkie/serama from my first hatch, that was named Ashe once I figured out what sex he was. The third time around electricity went out again (horrible luck) and the temp dropped to 80 degrees. Again was so sure none would hatch, but then I heard peeping and a little tiny miracle lavender silkie hatched. Now I have 4 Seramas, 2 from Tiny Tots, and two from Theron, two beautiful silkies from Tiny Tots, Ashe from my first hatch and my new little lavender from my second and 20 silkie eggs due on the Friday. So excited, but I need to get this coop building on the move, I have a lot of new chickies to house and need a bigger run for them all. But chickens are exactly like potatoe chips, you can never have just one and once you start it's hard to stop.

They're here!

Aaron and Abby are here from Theron and they are doing well. I have to keep them seperate at night because they are older and bigger and don't seem to like the others yet. I renamed Abby, Autumn because of her beautiful coloring. Aaron is still Aaron, I haven't thought of a different name for him yet. All the others are doing very well. Rayna and Apollo finally warmed up to Ashe and they all groom each other, very cute. Ashe is still very much my baby though, he flies to me when ever I'm around, and he cuddles up to me and sleeps. He is the sweetest bird ever. He's so spoiled, but I love him so much, I can't help but spoil him. I'm in the middle of building a new coop and run. And hopefully when I'm done, I can get some more hens for my boys. I'm thinking of keeping Clara, cause she's so small she doesn't take up much room, but Cotton needs more room and his own hens. But I don't know, Clara seems to have attatched herself to him and I don't want to seperate her from him. She'd look really cute with Ashe though. But who knows..

Cotton and Clara

Cotton and Clara

This is Rayna and Apollo

The little guy on the right is my Ashe Silkie/Serama Mix

Ashe on his favorite perch

Abby "Autumn" & Aaron