Happy Day!!! Happy Day!!! The Babies are HERE! (Very Graphic)

[bvar22]

This is one of our Welsummer Hens.
She is about 1-1/2 years old, and has just given us our first Home Grown new babies.
There are 3 healthy chicks so far, and she is sitting on 6 more eggs
but we aren't counting those yet (cheap laugh).
She has been a great Mom so far.
Notice the intense eyes and raised neck feathers.
She is saying, "Don't mess with ME or my babies".


Is there anything cuter than Baby Chicks?
These are 1 day old.
We knew they were coming, but we didn't expect them until the weekend.
About a week after she started Sitting the Eggs, one of her sisters
decided she wanted to be a mother too.
So we are expecting more in about a week.


We have been keeping Chickens since 2007, and have 12 other Hens and two Roosters of different breeds,
but up till now, all of our chicks have been ordered through the mail.
This is one step closer to Sustainability, and we celebrate that step.

Since we live in The Woods surrounded by National Forest,
a Predator Proof Coop was essential. We built the first one in 2007. (Bottom Right)

We added an Isolation addition (Middle Above) for either Raising Chicks,
or raising Pure Breds at some future date.
I was scrambling last week to get it ready and absolutely Snake Proof in time
for the new chicks... pick, shovel, and mixing cement by the sack in a wheelbarrow..a tough job for an Old Guy when the thermometer hits 105F.

At any rate, I finished yesterday at about noon, walked into the house, dirty, sweaty, covered in cement dust, and told my wife that it was ready.
An hour later, she comes running in yelling for me to come an see the new chicks! We really weren't expecting them for another few days. The Timing couldn't have been closer.
We carefully moved the new mother and her brooding sister to their newly completed home. They will be much safer there away from the rest of the flock, the roosters, and predators (king snakes) that are too small to bother the other birds.

If that wasn't enough,
an hour later, the rain started to fall, a GOOD one too, blessedly cooling things off and forming puddles in the dust. We hadn't had ANY rain for 6 weeks, and daily temps over 100F.
We were dancing.

If THAT wasn't enough, some money we had lent out a while back, expecting to never see again,
drove up in our front yard with a BIG Thank You.

I don't know what your life is like,
but I don't get many days like that.

[Vanje]

1. Like! nt

[jul61252]

6. +1

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Cute photos, and yes chicks are cute

now baby conures, on the other hand, or baby cockatiels... not so much.

Those are a mother can love them kind of a thing... not self reliant at all

[WhiteTara]

3. Happy Day Indeed!

Great blessings. :toast:

[Booster]

4. Very beautiful hens and chicks. I'm proud of you - ya done good.

[barbtries]

5. there is nothing cuter!

sounds a like a lotta good days for you! thanks for sharing

[Bryn]

7. Hey, Neighbor!

Awesome pictures! Those hens are lucky to have such good person like you and your wife. Congrats on babies! They're so cute!

[RKP5637]

8. Beautiful!!! Thanks for sharing this!!! n/t

[PDJane]

9. Sometimes, when I see things like this,

I get a bit nostalgic for the farm. I always get nostalgic in the fall; I remember the taste of real macintosh apples off the tree, and that's impossible in the city.

Then I remember walking to school in the snow, feeding the livestock at 5:00 am, milking cows...all of that stuff would kill me now!

Those pics are great! I remember those little fluffballs showing up......

[Ruby the Liberal]

10. This thread is full of win!

Thanks for sharing the pics. They are adorable!

k&r

[Kceres]

11. The photography is spectacular! Great job. nt

[InvisibleTouch]

12. Fantastic!!

Loved your write-up and the pictures. Thanks! Best of luck to the new chicks!

[aquart]

13. Hope all your days trend this way from now on.

Mazel tov!

[Alameda]

14. Aaaaawwwwhhh...........so beautiful! You done good!

I've been wanting to have hens....but have been putting it off. I'm in an urban area, but still have serious predator problems (raccoons, possums, hawks).

[chill_wind]

15. Sweet! Wonderful pics, wonderful anecdotes

from one of my very favorite DUers always.

[MuseRider]

16. Nobody has worked harder

or spent more time learning and planning than the two of you, at least in my opinion. As to the perfectly wonderful day, you deserve it.

The weather is much like that here. We also had a rain, probably the same system, and it was joyous.

I love watching people make it closer and closer to sustainability.

Love the hens and chicks. LOVE your pens. Have fun watching them grow.

[bvar22]

20. Thanks for the kind words, neighbor.

We goof off a lot too.
All WORK and no play sucks.
My grandfather would be appalled at all the time I WASTE on the Internet.


That rain was wonderful,
but it looks like we may be back to the same old pattern now,
Hot, Dry, Humid.

Always a pleasure to hear from a kindred spirit.
:hi:

[lamp_shade]

17. Thanks. Nice!

[TalkingDog]

18. Momma is BEAUTIFUL! I love the feathers.

nt

[bvar22]

21. I'll tell her.

Welsummer Hens are beautiful.
They look a lot like wild game birds.
They are good layers, almost every day so far.
Their eggs are medium/large, but very dark brown in color...chocolate.

This is our Welsummer rooster.

His name is Prince.
We try not to name them, but can't help it sometimes.
You can see that he has a Princely posture.

We can't be certain that he is the father,
but the chicks look just like their mother did when we got her.
A few of the eggs she is sitting on came from our other chickens,
so we are hoping for a surprise.

[AnneD]

30. Your rooster ......

Reminds me of my brothers. He got rid of him and I told him he made a mistake. Bro complained that the rooster pecked people too much. I told him that his flock of chickens had increased because of this rooster. He was very territorial and protective. When a hawk flew over or a storm was blowing in, this rooster would crow and all the hens would go over to him and he would 'protect' his harem. He was a joy to watch. You just knew he would fight ANY predator that attacked his family.

They kept the Dominecker rooster, but I told him if he was smart, he would keep an eye out for a rooster from the last batch of the other rooster. That was a classic rooster.

[JBoy]

19. Great thread!

Reminds me of the time back in 3rd grade - our class hatched some bantam chicks in an incubator, near the end of the school year. I think they normally gave the chicks to some local farmers, but somehow I arranged to take the 3 or 4 chicks up to my grandparents' cattle farm. Grandma put the chicks in the barn, and the next time I visited they were "chickens". Then one day grandma told us some of them were laying eggs, and that we should come up to see. Eating an egg from that came from a chicken I helped hatch was a mind-blower for a city kid.

[AmBlue]

22. We just lost our oldest hen this morning, and will get chicks in the Spring.

Very sad when a dear old girl who has served this family well for many years goes, but it is a beautiful thing to witness the cycle of life. And we did give her a very good life.

Your babies are beauteous!! Congrats!!

[Nothing Without Hope]

23. Thanks for sharing this with a wistful city person

Lovely! K & R so more people can see and enjoy your post.

[LWolf]

24. Wonderful!

Did any of the other eggs hatch?

I always have unhatched eggs; my broody hen keeps "collecting" eggs from the rest, so some end up behind the others; once hatch starts, though, the hen will abandon the unhatched eggs after the first 12-24 hours, focusing on the new chicks.

[bvar22]

26. Hi.

We had 3 hatch from the first batch of 10 eggs.
We moved them all down to ground level the first day, nest, eggs, chicks, Momma and all, where they could easily get to water & feed, and still sit on the eggs.
After about 2 days, Mother Hen seemed to pay less attention to the unhatched eggs, and more to her chicks.
We eventually removed her unhatched eggs,
but never even thought about putting them under the other hen (a week behind),
or bringing them inside and putting them in our brooder for a week or so to see what happens.
We felt pretty dumb.
The other hen had only four, and we could have tucked them right under her.

We had no idea of the time line of all her eggs since our other hens had laid in her nest too.
It was their favorite nest, and it collected a lot of eggs over a few days. Some of the hens would wait (and bitch) at her until she got off to get a drink or something to eat,
then they would jump up to her nest. The coop was pretty raucous for a while.

The other hen, Mama2, hatched out a little chick yesterday,
and we are watching her remaining 3 eggs.
So far, she is still sitting & tending them, but if she leaves,
we will bring them inside and put them in our brooder for a few days to see if any hatch out.

The original 3 are doing well, and getting BIG.

[LWolf]

27. Aren't they fun?

My old broody hen hasn't decided to set this summer...yet. She's only missed one other year out of 6, and she's the last of my original hens. We had a big hawk incursion this spring, and I'm down to only 4 hens, plus Handsome the rooster.

When she decides to sit, the other hens sit as close to her as possible to lay, and she immediately rolls them into her nest. The problem is that they will just keep doing this the whole time she's setting, giving a 3 week span of eggs!

Last year she hatched out about 80% of the eggs, which I thought was great, even though we didn't really need 11 more chickens, lol.

I could try separating her, but I've always been reluctant to move a nest she's decided to set on.

[bvar22]

28. They are wonderful!

We had no idea they would be this much fun and this engaging.
They have become an integral part of our daily life.
They are more intelligent than we initially assumed,
and have a complex social structure and language.

In the past, we have ordered eggs online, and hatched them in a brooder, and that was cool,
but that is not near as heart warming or inspiring as watching a mother hen take care of her young chicks.

Some of our older birds have stopped laying,
but they also don't eat much anymore.
They gave us a lot over the last 3 years,
and have earned their retirement.
They are welcome to stay.

In addition to all the extras,
our chickens have proved to be the most consistent, sustainable, and cost effective source of year round healthy food
than anything else we have done here.

They have also kept our yard virtually free from grasshoppers this year,
which are a plague everywhere else.
The Veggie Garden is fenced, and we don't allow the birds in there until late fall,
but they keep the grasshoppers out of the surrounding area,
which has minimized the population inside the garden itself.

They are the first thing we check in the morning when we let them out of the coop,
and the last thing we check before dark when we close their coop door.

[madrchsod]

25. nice!

i had a whole bunch of chickens,ducks,and geese when i lived in the country. it`s a never ending melody of sounds.

[flying_wahini]

29. Great pictures

Sounds like a day where the stars were aligned just for you!