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.

Wow! It had been forever since I posted on here. I mainly post on facebook so I have completely neglected my blog. I will try to do better and post more often for those that may actually still check here for updates.
since I last posted we have had a lot of changes in our life. Jerek got laid off from his job in Hillsboro in february last year. We put our house up on the market as we didn't know where we were headed financially. We had been given some money and were going to use it to take the kids to disneyland, so we went the first week in April. Went to coquille to leave tait and alison with the grandparent and while we were there, my mom said someone we know and goes to their church said he could get Jerek a job where he works as a civil engineer. We left to go to california and while we were gone we had 2 offers on our house. When we got home Jerek went in to talk to the boss at the civil engineering firm and found out he knew him too. He ended up getting the job and we moved all our stuff into his parents garage by the end of april. We pretty much left to go on vacation and never went back.
We ended up ina house out of town with 23 acres. Pretty much our dream. We have been working hard to improve the land and build fences so we can put some sheep on the land.
I have some goats I am going to milk in the spring and some chickens.
The kids are growing and learning so much by being out here. So am I to be truthful! Jerek is getting a kick out of watching me wrestle the goats down to treat their hooves to give them shots, and I would do that over dishes or laundry any day.
I will try to get some pics of our new life in the country but I am bad about that so no promises.=)

A petition to protect ourselves

Jerek's cousin-in-law created an online petition to sign if you agree in our right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms in the United States.

http://www.petitiononline.com/SSA2009/petition.html

Once it reaches 3.1 million signatures (only 1% of the US population in Jan. 2009) it will be submitted to Congress. This petition is partially in response to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTq2NEUlhDE

He says:

"I don’t think a little online petition will do much, but it can be a good reminder to our government about what we care about. Like sticking a post-it note on the desk of all 535 members of Congress. (100 Senators, 435 in House of Representatives)

Did you remember that when the states adopted the Constitution they met and drafted amendments to it and sent that list back to the Federal government? Those amendments are called the Bill of Rights. The States stipulated the right to bear arms, and it is well known that at the time the intention was to enable the people to protect themselves from potential tyranny of their government like they had while under British rule.

My Sham-Wow call to action:

I know you probably get email that asks you to forward them on, let’s face it…this is another one. If you don’t feel comfortable forwarding the email, no problem. Maybe you could link to the petition on your website(s) or post a link in a forum or blog you read? The important thing is that you take some kind of action. So many emails come through that say to forward them but what does that really do? Nothing. In this case you’ve got a non-committal option to take action, just sign the petition and maybe let other people know about it too. No flying to DC for a rally, no debate with people whose intellect your not so sure about, just a few clicks here and there."

--Robert Ault

North Bend, Oregon

The constitution can be read in its entirety online at:
http://www.constitution.org/constit_.htm

Along with the full Bill of Rights submitted as explanatory and restrictive clauses to the constitution:
http://www.constitution.org/billofr_.htm

Lastly the additional amendments that have been added over the course of history:
http://www.constitution.org/afterte_.htm