Jerek brought me this bouquet Saturday morning and loudly proclaimed, " I stinkin' love you!".
I thought it was so cute I put them in a vase and set them on my table. Later my mother-in-law came over and she was very concerned as to the smell of my garbage can. It wasn't the garbage but the skunk cabbage flowers. I had to throw them out, but I thought they were a bit pretty while they lasted.

Brown egg.

One of my hens that wasn't laying laid a brown egg yesterday! We had only to white chickens laying white eggs till now. I am so proud of her, she deserves a hug!=)

Hatch!

So 9 out of 11 eggs have hatched so far and at least one of the other 2 is trying to get out. I am so surprised at the success rate since I really didn't know what I was doing. Here are some pics.
They somehow ended up in reverse order when I uploaded them.

Egg Update

I candled my incubating eggs yesterday and they are all growing save one. They are supposed to hatch around Sunday. I can't wait!
I also added some new eggs to the incubator last Sunday. They appear to all be growing so I potentially could have 22 baby chicks in a couple weeks. Now to figure out what to do with the roosters... We might use them for fryers. We'll see when the time comes I guess. I will take pictures of when they hatch and post them next week.

Also other news at the Hodge farm, I know for sure one of my goats are pregnant. I was brushing her yesterday and noticed I could feel the babies kicking. It was so cool. She is starting to make an udder too so I know she is pregnant. I am not sure about my other doe. I suppose time will tell.

Here is the first day of trying to incubate some chicken eggs. They are all laid out here and marked so I know if I have turned them all.

I look through the window of the incubator.


And a look at the whole incubator.


I don't know if any of these eggs will hatch. I got them from my mother-in-law who has a rooster but we don't know if these eggs are actually fertilized. I can candle them on day 8 to see if there is anything doing on in the eggs, so I will take pictures of that and post them.

When we first moved out here I had some chickens. I had 11 of them. Between our dog we had and something that was breaking into the henhouse I ended up being down to 5.
Jerek helped me build a chicken tractor near our house, but it ended up being bigger than a chicken tractor. The hens don't mind the extra space though.
Here are some pictures of the ladies in their new house.


We have 2 hens that are laying right now. I am hoping with the days getting longer the rest will start soon.
In true hick fashion I converted on old microwave cart into a nestbox.


I usually let them out to roam during the day, but I want them to get used to their new home. They need to know where to go at night and where to lay their eggs.


They really want out. they were climbing all over the wire trying to get out.


I would like to have a couple more hens. i am going to try my hand at incubating and hatching some. I borrowed an incubator and my mom-in-law has a rooster and hens so I can get fertilized eggs from her. When I get that up and running I will post pictures of that.