And a peep was heard

First off, it's my birthday! Yay me. This is my last birthday before I turn 30. I remember as a kid thinking wow - when I turn 30 it will be 2008! Not that I would be old, but more I can't believe it's that far away... but yet, there it is, 12 short months away. I told Mike that I want a big deal next year. Feels like something worth celebrating.

This year we played it low key. We went for dinner and then ice cream. Mike got me a new pink riding coat to wear for commuting and for my training to ride the STP this year. And a blinky red light to go on my bike rack. Also for biking, I finally took my dad up on his offer to get me an iPod and got a sweet little green nano last week. I've got it loaded up with 350 songs so far and am loving it for not only my bike but also tuning out the world at work.

But perhaps the best gift of all is that Phyll's last two remaining eggs started peeping today!!!! So cool. We should have chicks tomorrow. Just in time as I think she's way too skinny and hasn't been eating enough the last week or so. Now we can fatten her back up along with the chicks. I can't wait to come home tomorrow and peek in on them!

In other news, we had a snow day last week. No pictures, but let's just say that you know it's bad in Seattle when it takes me 2 hours to get home and I only work 5.5 miles away. It has since warmed back up and all the trees are budding out, the plants making their appearances and the hellebore (sp?) blooming.

My folks, in Minnesota got hit with snow last week too. Pretty close to a couple of feet. The snow did not make the early lambing any easier (last one born today) - but gosh are they cute in the snow!

Candling is fun!

So here we are, twelve days into the egg experiment and all is going fairly well. Candling is very cool - in all the chickens we had, and eggs we incubated when I was a kid, we never candled any of them. Of course, my method is fairly primitive - I'm using Mike's old dive light as it's about the right size. So while I can see what's happening it's not super bright. If we do this again, I'll have to make myself a better setup.

As far as I can tell we have 2 good eggs, and one maybe. I'm pretty sure that one Maran and one Dominique are progressing as planned, the other Dominique egg looks like it may have stopped maturing around day 6 (according to a handy photo guide I found online) which means that now it's just a warm rotten egg - yum!

Hmmm. A friend at work is thinking about surprising her kids with chicks/pullets on Easter. Her son Will is really excited to have chickens - they even came over a few weeks ago (did I mention that before?) to see my set-up. If she decides to, I may see if Denise is okay with me keeping her chicks (from the eggs) for a couple weeks so that I can tuck three feed store chicks for Darrin in with Phyllis as well. I think if I put them in at night after the eggs hatch that she'd accept them without question. Then at 3 weeks I can deliver Denise's chicks to her (sans Phyllis) and Phyl can keep Darrin's chicks growing until Easter (they'd be 4 weeks old then).

Fun! Here's some photos - Phyl's setup in the shed in Jake's old crate, and her in her cardboard box nest.

Chicks in progress

Well, to catch everyone up, here are the events of the last week:

Valentine's Day - Mike and I played it casual as we do every year. We exchanged cards, he brought me flowers and I made dinner.

Thursday - Phyl's eggs arrived at last. I put all 6 under her and she was happy as a clam - or perhaps happy as a broody hen?

Friday - I took two eggs away from Phyl as it was pretty obvious she couldn't cover them all as well as she needed to (the outer eggs were a lot cooler than the center eggs).

Saturday - we went skiing with some friends and their 3 year old daughter. It was a beautiful, warm sunny day. Had a blast! That night I discovered that Agnes has a cold, or perhaps bronchitis, either way she's sneezing and wheezing and generally not feeling too good. Likely why she stopped laying a couple weeks ago. I've turned the heatlamp on 24x7 again hoping to give her some respite from the cold.

Sunday - we had a lazy day. Ran errands, played with the dogs, then went to friends' house for "Thanksgiving in February". We do this every year. Buy a turkey when they go on sale, then have a dinner where we all bring our favorite dish.

Today - I candled Phyl's eggs just to make sure this grand experiment is working. 3 of them looked just fine - I could see the dark spot of the embryo and the beginnings of the blood vessel web. But one was cracked. So, that leaves her with 3. Hopefully she'll hatch at least one or two chicks. Otherwise I'm not sure what she'll do!

Lucy's the smartest

So, slowly, slowly my girls are becoming more friendly. Most mornings they come towards me when I go into the coop - looking for morning treats. But, Lucy is the smartest of them all. She's learned to eat cracked corn out of my hand. So sweet! Especially because she's the biggest of them all. Penny is "this" close to doing it as well, she's just a bit shyer than Lucy is. Pru and Agnes are interested, but not enough to come too close yet.

In other news, Phyl is all settled into the dog crate in the shed. She doesn't seem willing to come out of the nest to eat/drink/poop on her own even though she has clean water and plenty of food in the crate as well. So my new morning routine is to take her out of her nest, put her in with the big girls to do what's needed, then put her back in her nest 15 minutes later. Seems to be working so far - her eggs will arrive tomorrow or Thursday. I'm keeping a close eye on her to make sure that she's maintaining her weight and bright eyes.

Hopefully this will all work out - if not, I'm not sure what to do with her...

Hatching eggs are on their way

My friend Denise on the peninsula has agreed to take any chicks I can hatch. Yay! So yesterday we ordered 6 standard size eggs (about all little Phyl can handle, and maybe more (we'll see). We ordered 3 Cuckoo Maran eggs and 3 Dominique eggs. We're hoping to hatch 4-5 of them and then hoping to get at least 2 hens out of it.

I gave Phyl 3 golf balls to sit on last night to keep her broody. This weekend I'm setting up a broody box for her in the crate that Jake outgrew so that we can move her in there Saturday night. We're going to keep her in the garage. The eggs ship on Monday and I think will be here Wednesday. Then 3 weeks later we should have eggs! The way the dates fall mean the chicks should hatch on my birthday, give or take 24 hours - so much fun!

Once the chicks hatch, I'm going to meet Denise half way and hand off the chicks and Phyl to her to raise. She's got a small coop that she's no longer using and is going to put them in there for the first 4-6 weeks. I'll keep you posted on how this goes. What fun!

And the broodiness continues...

Phyl continues to be broody. I've tried giving her ice cubes to sit on - they just made her wet and crabby. I've been pulling her out a couple times a day, but she has a bite to eat and then goes right back. The last two nights I've turned out the light and put her on the roost bar, but she goes right back in the morning. All that's happened as a result is that Agnes and Pru stopped laying as well.

So now I'm trying to find someone that either wants a broody Seabright Bantam, or wants a few chicks. I'd love to buy some fertile eggs for her to sit on and let her hatch them, but I don't have room for any more birds so I'd need to be able to give them (and her with them) away as soon as they hatched. Oh well. One friend of mine is considering it. If that falls through I may post on Craigslist and see if I get any hits.

Finally, here are some new pics from Sunday...




Phyl in the nest box - being crabby





Penny looking pretty.




Lucy - the biggest of them all




How come if you take a picture of a group of hens you always get more butts than anything else?

Phyl goes broody

This week I was once again traveling for work, spending 5 days in Orlando. I left the house about 5:30am Sunday morning. Mike didn't collect the eggs again until late Tuesday night. He mentioned that he was only getting one or two a day, instead of the 2 or 3 we've been getting the past couple weeks since Pru started laying. Last night I got home late and went out to say hi to the girls. Turns out the heat lamp for the girls had gotten unplugged. I plugged it back in and noticed that Phyl was sleeping in the nest box. I just thought, poor little chicken, she must be cold!

I went back in and was talking to Mike and mentioned that Phyl was so cold she was sleeping in the nest box. He said no, she's been there all the time for the past couple days. Sure enough, I went out this morning about 8am - all the other girls were out and looking for treats. Phyl was in the box, looking pissed and then tried to peck me when I moved her to see if there were any early am eggs. She's definitely gone broody on us. Too bad, as I was enjoying the volume of eggs.

I looked around online while eating lunch to see if I could find any tips on getting her to quit. The only one I saw that seems feasible with the set-up I've got, is to give her some ice cubes to sit on. Apparently the coldness on her underside should persuade her to stop. I'm going to give it a try tomorrow if she's still there...

I know I don't have many visitors here yet - but if anyone comes by - any tips for un-broodying a hen?

In other news, Pru laid a two-yolker yesterday! I'll have to get some pics this weekend now that I'm done traveling for a while.

Party in the coop

The 125 watt infrared heat lamp bulb I've had in the girls roost box since October burned out on Monday night. I definitely didn't get the 4,000 hours promised by it's packaging, but that's neither here nor there. Since the light not only keeps the girls warm (and yes, I do know that they don't really need it here in Seattle except when it's really cold) but is also the reason we're consistently getting eggs this time of year, there was a sense of urgency to replacing it. I had an extra 250 watt bulg, but that seemed like it might be too warm in their little space.

So, Mike went to Lowe's on Tuesday afternoon - we were out of all other kinds of light bulbs too. He came home and said that he couldn't get a red one, they only had clear. So, Wednesday after work I went to the co-op to get another red one (where I'd gotten the original) and they were our of them as well. So I bought a clear one - after all, it shouldn't really matter, the red ones just remind of my girlhood as that's what my grandpa always used in the barn.

Since then it's been party time in the coop! The clear bulb gives off enough light that the girls can stay out in the run until all hours. The first night they were out and active until 8pm or so, Thursday night until 10pm and last night until 11:30pm - and then up way before dawn. So today I put in the 250 watt red bulb so that they would get some sleep at night. Plus, I just find it disturbing on some level that their biological clocks were knocked so off balance by all the light. Tonight they went to bed as usual about 45 minutes after dusk.

Prudence starts to lay!

So I was in NYC for the last 10 days. The first 6 for work and the last 4 playing tourist with my mother who had never been before. I'll try to post photos from the trip later.

While I was gone, Prudence started to lay! On Tuesday, I asked Mike how many eggs he'd been getting and he mentioned that he'd gotten 3 that day. I asked if he'd collected them the day before (not an out of line question for my forgetful husband) and he said yes, of course. Soooo, 2 laying hens do not equal 3 eggs. Turns out that she's been laying almost every day since. Her eggs are slightly larger than those of the bantams and seem to be getting bigger with each one. They are a nice warm reddish brown color.

So exciting! She's all grown up...

Still no photos of the new girls. We were busy all day on Saturday and even tho I was out and cleaned the coop, I didn't have a chance to take their photo. Then Sunday was cold and rainy. But the new girls are settling in and the old girls haven't stopped laying (another 6 eggs since last Thursday) - we're averaging just over an egg a day. Phyl and Agnes seem to be in sync, both laying about every 36 hours or so. Which is just fine with me. Hopefully they'll keep on that nice steady pace for the rest of the winter. Pru should start laying soon and Penny and Lucy in March.

I've determined breeds for the new girls. Lucy is a Black Langshan (first photo below) and Penny is a Partridge Chantecler. Both are going to be very big girls.

In other news, Jake and Sam both had big vet appointments last week. Jake got neutered and microchipped. Sam had his teeth cleaned. Both are doing well, we just took Jake's cone off tonight. Altho, it looks like Jake might have another minor ear infection. Mike will have to take him in and have that looked at. And then deal with ear drops while I'm gone next week. Bummer for him!

Oh, and our omelet last week was fabulous!