More cuteness than we can stand

They are here!  About 26 chicks hatched over the last week and what fun to see all the different colors and guess their parents from our flock of about 25 hens and 2 roosters.  The children have named many of them, from Bonnie to Vivian.  We had a very successful hatch and now know that testing the thermometer against others is critical!   We hatched as many blue and green eggs as we could, those are the chicks with “fat faces.”  They have a lot of plumage which makes them look chubby.  Rather than blather on though, I’m going to let the pictures do the talking…

Resting in between squirming, such hard work!

Stretching for the first time

Tuck fighting his instincts

So many breeds, so many colors!

Curly getting hypnotized

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One special heat-loving chick

Well after three weeks of turning our eggs and hopeful anticipation of many fuzzy chicks to play with, we hatched one.  Yes, you read right, 36 eggs and one baby!  So the children and I used the failure as a science project.  We hypothesized that perhaps the thermometer that came with our new incubator was inaccurate.  We gathered five thermometers from around the farm and put them in the incubator and found that the one we used was 5 degrees too cool.  So we believe that we cooked our chicks.  When we thought we had them at 99.5, they were actually at about 105 degrees.  We can’t figure out how we have one live chick that survived this sauna.  He was our biggest egg which led to more theories.  Here is a picture of “Buddy” as my son named him, I think “Miracle” is more fitting.  He shivers quite a bit and seems to like being right under the heat lamp, hmmm.

Buddy the Wonder Chick

We think his Dad is “Officer” and his Mom is “Triple Time Cuteness:”

Dad, our sweetest rooster named "Officer"

Mom, "Triple Time Cuteness," an Araucana who lays olive green eggs

This weekend we will test our hypothesis by putting a batch of fresh eggs in the incubator with a new, tested thermometer.  So back to waiting anxiously for three more weeks!

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