Chicken story continued.....

So spring came and I had decided to hatch chicks, from my flocks eggs. I saved eggs then sorted them out for the best and set 24 eggs, 10 green, 10 brown, and 4 white. I set them to hatch on May 4 my mom's birthdays (the original flocks birthday is St. Patrick's day). Everything was going fine in till day 17 when my mom's cat Rita while sleeping on top of the incubator (which I had tried to prevent her from doing) turned up the heat to 107 degrees. I was terrified that they where all died, but gave them a chance. But on day 20 me and my sister where so excited when we heard chirping meaning at least one was alive.

So day 21 came and my mom woke me up and said I need to look in the incubator. Here's what I saw:

But I had to go to school but when I came home there was 11 little chicks waiting for me. Unfortunately they where playing roll the unhatched eggs so they move to a warm brooder:

But there was more hatching to come:

But out of 24 eggs 20 hatched. The 4 that didn't hatch I opened up to see what had happened. Two (one green and one brown) hadn't developed and two (one green and one brown) died on day 17 during the the temperature spike.

I quickly saw that the 10 gallon aquarium was not going to work for a brooder so I brought up my big one:

 Here are the majority of chicks by breed/cross:

All 4 WL/EE crosses

4 out of the 5 EEs the other was pure white

BR crosses

BA/EE crosses

CM/EE cross

But they grew and I fell for different individuals, from either their looks or friendliness. My favorite was a WL/EE mix who was a sweet heart. Here is a picture of him helping me on the computer at about 2 weeks:

 At 4wks they moved outside, to my chicken tractor. On about their 2 or 3 day outside one of the EE chicks broke his toe:

So he and one of the WL/EE chicks moved inside for the night in an attempt to treat his foot. But it turned out he had perfect timing, that night a raccoon broke in and killed 6 chicks including all the other colored EEs. So I moved them to my run with a cage inside which they could come into to get inside. And after that 1 chick disappeared for no apparent reason. So I was down to 13, but they did well and at about 5wks I took more pictures to try to figure out sex and mix.

My friendly little WL/EE

WL/EE

WL/EE

BR cross

BA/EE

EE

BA/EE

BR cross

BR cross

BR cross

BA/EE

CM/EE

EE

At 7-8wks they started to free-range with the adults.

Friendly WL/EE

and some of my favorite pictures at 9wks:

Little Yellow Legs

Carmel 

BA/EE

But Little Yellow Legs at about 12wks was killed by a raccoon, when she roosted in a tree.


I'll start with the broody hens and their babies in the next post.