We hatched some chicks! Jack asked for and received a small incubator for Christmas. We waited until February to put any eggs in it because I didn't want them to be in my house forever waiting for warm weather.
But first, I went to the feed store to get some chicken feed. I had purposely decided to STAY AWAY from the feed store with Bo in March, because that's when they have baby chicks for sale, by the hundreds. I knew for certain that if I took him in during "chick days" at the store, I'd never leave without any. And let me tell you, we did not need any more chickens. I was overrun with eggs.
These are just what's out on the counter, and they are out on the counter because they won't fit in the fridge. The fridge is already full of eggs.
The chickens were at their prime and laying very well.
So anyway, we stopped in during the should have been safe month of February and the second we walked through the door I knew I was in trouble.
But it was too late. Bo took a deep breath and said
"CHICKS! I SMELL BABY CHICKS!"
Ack. Then he heard the peeping and cheeping and it was pretty much a lost cause.
And here we are, ten minutes later, with three new baby chicks.
Bo takes pretty good care of the chickens. Recently he has decided he's scared of cobwebs and we have been completely overrun with them in the coop, so he's hesitant. He will always go with Jack, though.
Anyway, he loves the chicks so much, I can't say no. I'm not afraid to eat the big chickens either, so I don't think you can actually have too many chickens. Dinner is always only a hatchet away.
All right, so anyway. As if those three weren't enough, we had to try out the incubator. I got a half dozen eggs from a friend, and we set everything up. On the fifth day, I put the eggs on a special light to see if they were viable and growing. Three of them were, three of them were not. We tossed the three bad eggs and kept on going.
Pic of embryo growing.
And sure enough, roughly around three weeks after we started, they hatched. Bo and Jack were so excited. They hatched during the day when they were at home, so they got to watch the entire process. It was a fantastic learning experience for them.
One of the new babies on day 2 after hatch. They fill out pretty quickly.
Typically you wouldn't put baby chicks of different ages in the same bin while they are waiting to go outside. Chickens are vicious, the big ones would normally peck the little ones to death. Bo didn't know this, and put them together thinking he was doing the right thing.
This baby chick right here is a complete and total a**hole. There were NO problems putting the babies with the big ones. I figured at that point that particular chick would be a rooster since it was so dominant, and that turned out to be true. We made him into pot-pie about three months after he hatched.
You might wonder if that bother's the kids. It does, but only a little. They understand the chickens are also food, and if we want to keep buying baby chicks, we have to do something with the big chickens. I always buy breeds that will double as meat chickens. Well, except for Von. I'll get to the ridiculous story about Von in another post.
Anyway, we hatched out three healthy chicks to add to the three we got from the feed store. We have a good routine down for taking care of the chickens. Bo is a great caretaker to the babies, Jack does best with the grown chickens, and Justice is not responsible for their day to day care because he is the butcher. He does help when we do our semi-annual cleaning out of the coop, I just don't ask him to take care of them on a day to day basis because I don't want him to get attached to them since they are food.
My friend Heather bought Bo this shirt, he has worn it to death, he loves it so much. It was a very sweet thing for her to do.
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