Talk About More Babies

Welcome to Talk About Tuesday! If you are new, check out the Guidelines before posting. Thanks for joining us!

We're having babies left and right around here and its so exciting!!!

For an update on the babies scroll to the bottom.

Ever since we bought our farm and our first three baby chicks from the feed store two years ago the kids and I have been dreaming about hatching our own babies. We finally gave up on the idea since none of our hens looked interested in being mothers. Several weeks ago we got rid of our rooster because roosters are just about the most annoying creatures ever and I was sick to death of him. Good riddance!

Except that two weeks later one of our hens got broody. My son was dying to have her hatch some eggs so like any good neighbor would he went next door and stole 8 fertilized eggs to put under her.

Everything was going great until last week when Lovely went out to collect eggs by herself. She took four of the fertilized eggs, brought them in and put them away in the fridge! I had no idea she could even get in the hen house by herself so it didn't occur to me to check the eggs before she put them away. Maybe my mothering instincts are running a little high these days but I was very upset when my son came in several hours later to tell me that four of his eggs were missing. Later when the kids broke them open to see what was inside two had deceased baby chicks in them and two didn't. Poor things!

The kids were so excited this morning when they saw that two of the remaining eggs were starting to hatch. We've been watching them in anticipation all day. Look at that sweet little wet head!

One of them has finally made his way out and we have some more bad news. No matter how many times I told my kids to leave the eggs and chicks alone they just could not control themselves. The Mother hen finally got fed up with them and abandoned her babies! Our neighbor came over to help us figure out what to do. She broke the second one out of it's shell before it suffocated and now they are both under lights in the house. One of the eggs didn't have a chick in it and the fourth one never started hatching and probably won't now that it's mother isn't sitting on it.

I'm mad because although I wanted baby chicks I didn't want to babysit them! We are going to sneak them back under their mother tonight and see if she will take care of them but if she doesn't then it looks like I will have two more noisy mouths to feed. For such tiny things they sure are loud!

It's been an exciting day around here for us countrified city slickers! What do you have to talk about?

Update

I can't believe it! That third egg hatched last night so we have three surviving chicks!!

This was the chick that wasn't strong enough to peck it's way out of its shell yesterday and after being abandoned by its mother none of us thought it would make it through the night. Look at it now! Its a healthy little chick!

The last of the good news is that the mother hen came back to its nest last night and she's taking care of her chicks again. Go Momma!

We've had baby chicks before and they are fun but it is nothing like watching our hen with her own babies. It warms my heart! You know I will posting videos of them together. You might as well get used to it. This is going to be a chicken blog for a while whether you like it or not!

*Important - Please link to your individual Talk About Tuesday post instead of your home page or else my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder will have to spend time fixing the links. Here is how you link to an individual post if you’ve never done it before: Right click on the date at the bottom of the post you want to link to (or the post title depending on where you blog) click “Copy Shortcut” and then paste it into Mr. Linky.