Chirp, Chirp

Chirp. Thats the sound you hear when you open our front door. Our quaint little home in the hills has been over ran by chicks. As many of you know we several weeks ago we set up an incubator and filled it with eggs from our hens. Thursday the 23, we started seeing our first pip, just a few ours after our first pip we hatched out our very first chick. This is a sweet moment for us, when we bought our chickens last spring I had a little experience with chickens, and the Wanderer had no experience. In a years time we have grown and learned so much about chickens, and now we have hatched off our very first. Does this make us chicken grandparents?

 Later in the evening another hatched out. The second one is bigger than the first, and more yellow-white in color. With the exception of the Silkie eggs, the chicks hatching out in the incubator are mutts. Can chickens be mutts? Our rooster is a big Australorp and our hens are Golden Comets, Tetras and Barred Rocks. We have a breeding pair of Silkies and they live in a separate coop and run from bigger chickens. The picture to the left is of our second hatchling, resting after breaking free of its shell. 



We also bought more chicks today. We have been wanting Ameraucana chickens for some time now, and we finally found a few chicks. By a few I mean 10. In the course of the day our flock has nearly doubled in size. I really don't know what we will do with so many chickens. I hadn't planned on buying 10, but was excitement got the better of me and I ended up buying way more than I needed. 

Today will be an interesting day as the rest of the eggs hatch out. We have a second batch in an incubator that will hatch out in about a week. So many chicks! 

The second chick, working its way out.