April 10th, during a field trip today our 350 day old chicks arrived!

I am so excited to being able to raise free range chickens!

Guess what, our hens hatched 4 chicks April 30th!
That is the good news now here is how things came about.  Two hens were setting. One started to sett a good week before the barred rock hen joined her in the same nesting box.  During this time, another hen would just jump on these two and drop an egg a day.  Finally I was able to put a board over them to stop that.  So this morning I see the barred rock outside with two new tiny chicks!!  I check inside the hen box, and old faithful is sitting there, hatching out the eggs. There is another new chick standing beside mom hen and I pick her up and take her to the barred rock who runs over and starts to 'punish' the chick for not coming herself, then all is well.  I put fresh food out in the chicken feeder located in the hen house and the first old faithful gets off the eggs to eat and there is another chick sitting on the eggs!  So I put that little one out to barred rock so now she has 4.  Well old faithful, after eating and taking a quick dust bath now does not want to return to the 22 eggs still waiting to be hatched and is pacing the fence line to get to her rightful babies.  After all, she was sitting on them longer and Barred Rock should complete her time to get her chicks.  I don't know how to force a hen to sit on eggs.  So Andy and I put some straw and a heat lamp in an empty 80 gallon horse water bucket and Andy grabs the hen and I the eggs and we close her up in there, no escape.  I finish cleaning the stalls and when I peeked at her, she had covered the eggs with straw and two eggs rolled off to the side.  I think things are not going well for old faithful.  If no more chicks hatch with the next day or so, we may have to take back 2 chicks from barred rock.  I hope this will all work out.  I just do not know how to practice good animal husbandry sometimes. On a sad note, when I was moving the eggs one little chick was smashed under them.  Oh another interesting note, the chicks that did hatch, I could not find a sign of their eggs they hatched from, the hens must have destroyed the evidence! So old faithful duitifully sets on the 22 eggs we moved all night and the next day I check under her and no signs on any hatching, and off to work I go, leaving an open area at the top of old faithful's egg setting prison.  When I returned home from work old faithful was gone, both hens were trying to be the moms of the 4 chicks! I moved the 22 forsaken eggs under a new hen I found that just started setting on about 6 eggs, lucky her!
May 8th Don't count your chickens before they are hatched, yea we covered that lesson already, now we are losing the little chicks! I counted them today and we have lost 100 at least. Good thing I didn't name them all yet. Andy announced this morning that there IS something going after the clutch of chicks that arrived on the farm a month ago.  So we decided to put them all with the regular hens and the 4 roosters in the hen house out by the west town. We meaning that would be my job, Andy had to leave this morning and since I don't go to work till 1 this afternoon, I was happy to try to save their little lives after I turned out the horses, took care of the goats and bunnies and cleaned all the stalls. I didn't want to carry the chicks in the wheelbarrel as the ground would be bumpy so I decided to just carry 15 each in a large feed bag. Odd that Andy just re-strung the hot wire this morning.  I had to duck between the wires with the bags of tender chicks twice to get the chicks from the old barn to the hen house.  This walk I figured in distance had to be 2-3 house blocks. Not only was the distance great, the fencing hot, the chicks heavy, but the ground was still soft from all the rains! The chicks were so bewildered to be out among the real world! On the second trip I had to reduce the number of chicks in the bags.  On the third round I took off my jacket.  4th round, I got shocked by the hot wire. By the 5th round I was sweating, already smelly from cleaning the stalls and someone pulled in the driveway, way over by the entrance. (oh please do not make me walk over to give you directions I thought to myself) Ahh good they are just leaving-perhaps they were downwind?. After this I was thinking some people join a gym to get in shape so I should make the best of this opportunity. I need bigger buns so I proceeded to do lunges with the two bags of chicks I had in each arm. mmm now I am getting fit I thought to myself hoping no one was watching me when on the next lunge step my back boot sunk deep in the still wet ground and would not come out! Trying not to disturb the already stressed chicks I reflected on my frozen postion. Yep directly in front of me a big pile of manure, in fact I was leaning towards losing my balance and heading face first into it as I continued to try to keep holding the chicks in the air. As I concentrated to lift my back leg, my face pointing to the good earth, the dog, Shotgun. had new interest in my doings and put her big snout in my face.  That was just enough to throw off my balance, aahhhhh!  All chicks arrived to the hen house safe and happy. I needed a good shower

Ok, I get home from work and it is dusk, and the little chicks are settling in for the night just outside the hen house.  Good thing I set at a desk most of the work day, as I scramble around, crouched over tying to herd the chicks into the hen house. If it were not for my happy lab helping I don't know how I would have been able to convience the chicks into the house. It is getting dark and I can barely see now, but I got the last peeping little chick in.  Now they will be safe and sound. We also set a heat lamp inside just to assure them all is well.  So I trot off to bring the impatient horses in the barn.

Sadly this morning, I go straight out to check on the chicks and I would guess about 15-20 died last night!  I am so mad, I want to stay out all night tonight with a loaded shotgun!