A Day in the Life, Springtime Version

Well, well, well.... deep subject, right? I just tried to edit a picture caption and my entire post disappeared and no amount of "undo" was fixing it. So here I am, retyping the entire post. *sigh*

Springtime on the farm is a time for new life. Any chicken people will tell you the pull of the farm store is strong this time of year. Maybe I'll just "look" at the baby chicks.... and take 6 or 12 or 15 home with me. Do not let me in the store with money in my account or cash in my pocket! Yikes! 

It's also time for lots of new life at the Poultry auction. All sorts of new life. In fact, I have so many slices that can generate from auction! But for today, I will stay closer to home. Like my kitchen countertop. Because doesn't every small time farm girl keep an incubator on her kitchen countertop? I have a dream that one day when our very pieced together, somewhat sketchily built back room/porch area is completely insulated, that we'll be able to set up the incubator back there. But as of now, temperatures still fluctuate too much back there and wreak havoc on the temperature control in the incubator. And the humidity, which isn't as relevant any more since we've switched to dry incubating. And this one is even a dry hatch. Previously, I have added water to bring the humidity up for hatching once we reach "lock down." Lock down, when the egg turner rack comes out and water is added and the human does not open the lid or mess with the humidity at all. Which I still don't. And lock down is still a thing even though we're not adding the water. Except that.... I am "only" doing the part where I don't open the incubator at all. Saturday night I thought to myself, "I should maybe check on our baby chicks in the incubator, I think they're only a few days from hatch." Maybe I should have had that thought 12-24 hours earlier because when I looked in the window, two chicks had hatched already! Today, Monday, there were 12 chicks hatched and several more "pipped." When they pip, it means they have chipped through the shell and are making a hole to break out of. When they get a line around the shell that looks  to me like a zipper then I say they are "zipped." Is this is a chicken term? I'm not sure if it's one of the many terms I've learned in the four years that I've been incubating eggs, or if it is something I just pulled out of my wacky-weird cranium as a way to describe the hatching process. 

Hatch days are a little bit like Christmas.... there's a ton of excitement and anticipation, you have some idea what you're gonna get, but there are a ton of details that you will get surprised about. Like coloring. Our hens this time are all silkies, some are satin silkies, but we had removed all the cochin bantams that weren't silkies or satin silkies from our hens before gathering these eggs. They are all black, white, or some combination or black/white. We have a couple "low expression" splash hens and one very "high expression" splash hen (this is a white feathered bird with a "splash" of black on it. The low expression hens have just tiny little black dots and not a whole lot of them, but the more prolific one, the high-expression one, is white with lots of black "splashed" on her feathering in varying size patterns. This hatch might have the possiblity of having our previous silkie Roo as the "father", and we have a little red Cochin Frizzle Roo we named Mr. Red. Our last Silkie roo was just a little too submissive and most, if not all, of our babies were fathered by Mr. Red. So to auction he did go (the silkie roo). We have since acquired another Silkie Roo that we named Mr. Sassafrass. Cuz he's got some sass in his "frass." Mr. Sass will not have any babies in this hatch, but in a few days I'll be re-loading the incubator and then we'll have some eggs that would be his. 

Our new-to-us Roo, Mr. Sassafrass

Our cochin Frizzle Roo, Mr. Red.
You can tell by the pic that we don't bring them in, even in the extremest of temps, 
as he has a little evidence of frostbite on his comb. 

Today we are watching closely to see what surprises the incubator will bring us. So far, by my count, we had 12 at 1pm. I can't wait to get home from town and count again! 

I was hoping I had taken a picture where you could see a splash that we hatched, but I don't think I have one. The other two photos I had were blurrier. It is hard to get a good picture through that window. 

I'm adding a few photos of chicks in varying stages of development. We've been preparing for March and April auction since the first of November! 

This is from our first hatch of this season, they hatched on Thanksgiving Day!
This chick has the features of a Satin Silkie, the feathering being more "satin" and not the thinner, fluffier silkie type feather. I think the coloring on this bird is amazing and it is super soft to pet. 

This little one is called a Sizzle, he's a silkie/frizzle. I don't know if he is actually a he, I have not heard any crowing yet at all. 

This lil dude is from our last hatch (the one before this current, happening-right-now hatch). He's probably 5 weeks old. Most of this pen is going through the awkward tween phase. This guy is a little ugly-cute, but he's mostly cute. He is a Sizzle. 

There was one more hatch between the two, but they are all in their ugly, awkward stage. I am hoping and praying (fingers crossed) that they get cuter soon.

So that is today's "slice of life." The miracle of new life and the excitement of hatch days. 

To read about other "slices of life" follow this link to Two Writing Sisters, Slice of Life Challenge, Day 3, and find lots of other posts in the comments!