Eggs they are a hatchin!

So I incubated a total of 52 eggs starting, I guess, 3 weeks ago.  There were 4 different batches since I ordered them off Ebay and they arrived at different times.  The first chick hatched right on time, 21 days after the start of incubation, on my Dad's birthday (7/31)!  Then another hatched in the early morning of 8/1 and a third was peeping inside the shell, but when the 2nd one hatched, the shell encased the other egg and I believe it suffocated the chick inside the egg unfortunately.  I cracked the egg open yesterday to find a fully developed chick inside, only problem was it was dead.  So out of the first 7 eggs incubated, we had 2 hatch.  They were both speckled sussex chicks (I did an image search on google to figure out exactly what they were).  

Here's the link on Ebay where I got them - it's an assortment of several different breeds of "rare" chickens.  There's blue/splash orpingtons, swedish flower hens, black/blue marans, speckled sussex, and silver laced wyandottes.

12 more of these "rare" breed eggs are supposed to hatch on Monday.  However, 4 of the eggs pipped late yesterday - a couple of days early.  I was worried that the chicks would hatch with intestines hanging out and stuff like many chicks do that are incubated at too high of a temperature and hatch early.  But when I went out to the incubator this morning to check on them, there were 4 seemingly healthy chicks in the incubator (and no guts hanging out).  

I could tell that one was another speckled sussex.  There were 2 white chicks in there that I was baffled as to what breed they may be.  From searching google images, I believe they must be splash orpingtons.  That is, if the breeds in the description are the only ones I have to choose from.  The other chick looks like it is black, so possibly a black maran, but there were no dark maran eggs in the hatch so that's weird.  I will be able to get a better look at the 4 new chicks once they dry off more, I mean they are brand spankin new :)  So I will post pics of them once they get all fluffy later today or tomorrow.

Still in the incubator are 12 helmeted guineas and 6 cuckoo orpingtons that are supposed to hatch on Thursday, 8/7.  Despite the fast shipping on the guineas, it doesn't look like many at all are going to hatch out of that batch.  The cuckoo orpingtons look pretty grim as well.  They took almost a week to get to the house, so I understand why that hatch rate would be low.

Finally, there are 15 more guinea eggs due to hatch on 8/14 (guineas take 28 days to hatch instead of the 21 days for chickens).  Those look very promising - I think there are only a couple that didn't have a chick growing in them when I candled them last week.

I'm not sure why I find hatching chicks so much fun, but I assure you it is!  Maybe next year, we will have tons of eggs out at the farm from all of these chickens.  Might have to do away with our 2 blue english orpingtons (I call them hussies - guess it shows my disgust with them...) because they have yet again gone broody after only laying again for a week or 2 since the last time they were broody.  It's funny because our new roo (got him as a chick back in March) is fighting with one of the hussies.  Here's a pic of it.  It was an interesting sight.  I've seen 2 roosters fight like that, but not a roo and a hen!  Her laying ethic equates her more to a rooster than a hen though...

That's the hussie in the air and the roo down low

Roo on the left, hussie on the right

Here are some of our promising birds for next year's egg laying.  This is the very first chicken I hatched out this spring (well, ever actually).  She is a white wyandotte.  The other 2 chickens are chocolate/buff orpingtons.  I got 4 of them from a lady in Newnan, and they look to me to all be turning out to be roosters unfortunately.  With all of these roosters, I'm thinking of trying to find someone locally who will process chickens.  It's either that or sell them on craigslist, but I'd rather keep them and enjoy the free range birds for dinner.  Plus, we could probably sell some of the meat too.

Our white wyandotte hen

In front is another chocolate/buff orpington.  There's 2 blue orpingtons in the background (both hens) - these can hopefully replace those damn hussies we have now.  There's also a welsummer hen on the very right and 2 welsummer roos.

There's a hussie drinking some water.  That one on the left is not my favorite either.  She's a rescue chicken and doesn't seem to lay any eggs.  She needs to go at some point.

This is one of 2 buff orpingtons that we have.  These ladies are wonderful.  They lay eggs for us almost every day.  They did go broody a couple of months ago, but not for nearly as long as the hussies.

Just gotta throw this one in there.  I let the goats out of the fence and let Dolly llama go out there as well.  She enjoyed chowing down on some "other side of the fence" grass for about an hour.  She's more of a goat llama than a llama llama. 

Did a little clearing today

Two years ago, a lumber company paid us some money to take some of our trees on the acres of land that we had not already cleared.  They cleared out a 2 acre plot that was adjacent to the 2 acres that we currently have fenced in where all of the animals live.  Now when you look at that land, you almost can't tell it was ever cleared.  Jason came up with a plan to clear a 10 foot path around the perimeter of that plot and fence it in using the auger to dig the fence post holes.  Then we can put the goats in there and they can go to town on all of the brush.  

So today was my first attempt at clearing the fence line.  I started out clearing the area outside of the fence so I could make a path to be able to GET to the area that needs to be cleared to make the new fence.  My goal for today was to clear along that fence and then start the new fence line clearing tomorrow.  I actually got that done and cleared out an area for the gate to go in the back corner of the fence.  The goats helped me the entire time.  Well, they mostly helped.  There were a few times when they wouldn't let me get to the brush I needed to clear.  But it was all good.  They made me feel safer because they would go ahead of me, so they would hopefully scare any snakes away before I got to them.  

I cleared a ton of blackberries today - lots of thorns and stuff.  I really, really hope they were blackberries at least, and not poison ivy...  I honestly can't tell the difference.  Guess we will find out in a couple of days.  Lord have mercy on my soul, I mean skin...

Here's the pics from today's clearing.

Here's basically where we started clearing on the outside of the fence.

Stevie and MooMan chompin down

I tell ya, that MooMan loves to smile :)

Making some progress

MooMan

Selfie with MooMan - he's eating my hat as usual

More progress

Stevie

We made it to the back corner!  Dolly Llama wanted to hang out with her goat friends...  Behind the goats is the area that was cleared last year.  Crazy, huh?!  

Here's the view from the back corner

Dolly Llama

I threw some brush over the fence for Dolly to eat

My sweet Stevie :)

Stevie trying to eat my glove

Check out those teeth!

A view from the starting point.

I went back out there for an hour this afternoon to clear some more.  Here's the pics.

This broody heifer wanted me out of her nesting box.  She looked kind of like a turkey I thought because she was so fluffed up.

MooMan tried to eat my glove

Boys will be boys.  Doing a little head-buttin

Acting all sweet

Here's what I got cleared in the afternoon.  It went pretty well.

Took Ezra out to the farm today

I took Ezra out to the farm today and he actually had a pretty good time.  We were there long enough to feed and water the llamas and chickens - probably about 20 minutes.  I got some pretty cute pics :)

Photo of MooMan photobombed by Ezra

Picking up rocks

Stevie seeing if Ezra had anything good in his hand

Pointing.  At something I presume.

Ezra and Stevie

Ezra and MooMan

Ready to leave

On Tuesday, I went out to the farm and finished clearing the area next to the trailers.  I think I got all of the sweet gums cleared.  Here's a couple of pics from that.  I'm more proud of it than I probably should be. That is a really huge pile of brush - I know you can't tell in the pic but I assure you that it is!  Next week (or perhaps tomorrow), I will start the clearing of the 10 foot wide fence area so we can fence in another acre for the goats to clear.  Maybe I should take MooMan off of craigslist.  Or maybe I should reevaluate the situation tomorrow...

I got some other good pics when I was out at the farm earlier this week.

The little chicks came out of the gate to peck around

Look at all of these animals!

Sweet Dolly Llama

Here's a good one of ole Norman in his giant garden

Did a little painting and what nots today.

My 2nd Facebook-free day was another productive one.  I feel so guilty for wasting so much time over the past few months.  I guess it doesn't hurt that it was a perfect 80 degrees out today.

So we have this problem with trees growing at the farm.  It's particularly elm trees, I believe.  They have grown up all over the areas of cleared land on our farm, and you can't just weed-whack these suckers down.  So I got out there with a saw today and went to town on some trees.  I had already cleared the trees away from the trailers yesterday, so today I took care of some of the "forest" to the left of the trailers.  

Here's before and after pics.

Gosh it looks so miniscule, but I assure you that ALOT of trees were cut down.  That's them in that big pile of brush in the front of the 2nd pic.

This is actually a "before" pic from today, but it shows how nicely cleared the area around the trailers/boat is.  That's a separate pile of brush.

So I also decided to use some old paint we had on hand to paint our oldest chicken coop.  It's been that drab tan color since we built it 3 or so years ago, and it needed a painting.  I didn't think I'd get as far as I did with that.  I painted till the paint ran out.  I still want to do the trim in white, but when I opened up the white can of paint, it was all funky and unusable.  Also worth mentioning is that the paint is an interior paint we used on our guest bedroom.  Guess we will find out how well it withstands the weather.  This painting fiasco may all be for naught.  We shall see :)

Here's some pics of the coop.  

Before

After!

Did I mention that I ran out of paint?...

There it is off in the distance.  Look to the left of the chickens.

Oh and those are our awesome juvenile chickens having a wonderful time pecking around in some hay today.  There's been a couple of huge hawks stalking them, but they did okay yesterday and I hope to God that they did okay again today.

Here's some more pics from today.

MooMan and Stevie wreaking havoc on the tack room.  Grrrr!

Stevie got a little paint on him up at the coop, hehe :)

Brutus, Mama Llama, and Dolly crowd around the tack room begging for food.

This is Normans's sun shade - the wheelbarrow.  If you look really closely, you can see him under there.

Here's a pic of Norman from a few months ago, since you can't really see him in the other pic.  He's a sulcata tortoise and is about 3 years old.  He moved out to the farm full time last week.  Since the garden wasn't doing so well, we decided that Norman could reside there and eat the failed crops.  I think he's pretty happy there.

Till next time...