Chicken Update: CRY FOWL!!

Well, this egg hatching thing is tougher than it sounds apparently. No wonder why people incubate more nowadays...gives you more control over the wild things.

This morning i went into the coop the check on the girls and found this:

which to my dear readers makes you giggle...until i tell you that the two chickens on the left are where Mama chicken is supposed to be. Aaaack! They had jumped up and sat on her eggs, thus kicking her out of her nest. Come on, you chickens!! We only have 3 days till our EHD (est. hatching date!!) Apparently, they didn't get the memo, and frankly aren't turning out the be the awesome Aunties they are supposed to be, eh? Aunts are supposed to be the spoiling type! I know, i have 7 neices and nephews, for cryin' out loud! First you spoil the pregnant momma, then you spoil the kids!!

But wait till you hear this. So, i flush the naughty aunties out of Mama's nest to find...say wah, only 5 eggs? I put 6 in there. There were 6 the night before. What in blue blazin' eggshells is goin' on here! I found evidence of yolk...i am hoping those Aunties didn't bust an egg! Hopefully it had just spoiled and started leaking. After recovering the 5 and placing them back in with Mama in her new nest, i noticed that another one is cracked and leaking a little, so the baby (if there is one) in there probably won't make it. 2 down, 4 to go. No pips yet, and i am not sure Mama will let me get in under there to see if there are any. She's barely tolerating me hand feeding her. There'll be no sleep till Friday night, i can plainly see. :o)

The good news is that we checked with our local feed store today and they are getting a shipment of day old Ameraucanas on Thursday, so worse case scenario, we could buy a few and sneak them under her that night.

The whole weekend was pretty delightful, i have this laundry list of things to get done before our guests come, and i got a few done, however, then i got sick on Saturday. Nothing big, just a sore throat and the nasal drip. Nothing worseinthe summertime, but what can you do?

Saturday i did manage to get some potato vines hilled for the first time and some weeding done. I also got two of our Roma tomatoes planted in the garden.

And being sick allowed me to help my daughter get some more of her reading done for school. She is going for the gusto: reading 135 books for 15 minutes each to get a trophey and a book from her kindergarten teachers. Unfortunately, she doesn't read things like Yurtle the Turtle or Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel anymore (she's been reading those since she was 2 and 3 years old), so we read chapter books--the second to third grader kind. But we read to quickly, so 2 chapters usually take 15 minutes for us, even though she is reading the equivalent number of pages for 2 kindergartener books. Oh well, we put a little more work into it than the other families who are only reading phonics books with their kids to get these 135 books read, but i think we've rewarded our daughter much more with the love and gift of reading at an early age. She'll even take books with us to the restaurant and read while she's waiting for her dinner. That's something that she'll have forever! Not some silly trophey she "earned" in kindergarten.

Not a bad weekend, and i hope you hada good one too!