Chicken update

Overnight we had a couple more chicks hatch. K moved them to the brooder in our basement this morning. We have seven blackish chicks from our barred rock hens (the brown eggs), and two chipmunkish chicks from the green eggs. The hens that laid the green eggs were half Easter-egg chicken. These chicks are 3/4 Easter egg chicken. Unfortunately, their dad and granddad are the same rooster, an Easter-egg rooster. He's a nice, friendy rooster, though. We've never hatched eggs ourselves before, but some of our hens have had a couple successes. Those successes were the mothers of the green eggs we put in the incubator. I must admit, I've had that country song, "I'm My Own Grandpaw" running through my head.

Moon-Spinner, the green eggs aren't sterile. They are from a type of chicken called "Easter Egg." I guess it's pretty much an Aracuna chicken. They are a breed that doesn't go broody (sit on eggs), though. The people we bought our chickens from use an incubator to hatch them. We've never had any green eggs hatch before by being sat on by our own chickens. We've had a few brown eggs hatch. Their dad was our Easter-egg rooster, and their moms were either a buff orpington, a black australorp, or a rhode island red.

K thought one of our white hens wasn't laying. I suggested she had a hidden nest. He assured me he's looked for one. I asked if he'd checked our bamboo brush piles because I've seen one of our white hens in the pile. He hadn't. We checked it this morning and couldn't find a nest. Then in the afternoon, when I was getting a stick of bamboo to attach to a plastic cup to dip for tadpoles, I disturbed a chicken who was in the other bamboo brush pile.

After dipping for tadpoles without success, my son and I searched the second brush pile for a nest and found one, about two feet of the ground in the pile. We got my husband to empty it. I'm too afraid of stuff that might lurk in brush piles (we've seen black widows on our property, and my husband has seen a couple copperheads). K removed the eggs on the surface and then found some that had fallen through the bottom a bit. In all, he found 15 eggs. Easily there could have been more that he couldn't see or reach. We dumped the eggs since we don't know how long they had been there. It was sad because this hen is our only hen who lays big, bluish eggs. K replaced the eggs with a plastic, fake egg, hoping the hen won't move to a different hidden nest. As long as she doesn't, we'll have to check this brush-pile nest every day to look for eggs.

Our neighbor had the news on, and he told my husband that there was a murder-suicide (or at least attempted murder--not sure if the shooting victim survived) on our street early this morning. I've looked into the local news web pages, and I think it was about half a mile from here. We'll have our faces pressed to the TV local news this evening. When we returned from grabbing a McDonald's lunch, K noticed the TV crew at one of the houses on our street.

J and I collected worms this morning. We hoped to go fishing today, but it looks like it may rain before K has time to come with us. He's building a pen to put the new chicks in when they first go outside (in about five weeks). I can't carry the pole and J (she's three and there's a lot of traffic on our road), and N will want to come, too, and I can't manage to keep two kids safe at the creek.

I'll end here. I think I've gone on long enough.