Turn on the heat!

Despite the chilly temperatures that appeared out of nowhere, the chickens have determined it is time to lay eggs, and indeed they have been.  All this Egg-citement has caused incubators to be pulled out of the closet and cleaned in anticipation of many new chicks being added this spring.  I also spent some time cleaning out the brooders and making sure we have a place to put them once they arrive.  Safely tucked out of the way in the front bedroom,  are the two incubators with a small  brooder in between.  The brooder will make a great place for the eggs to hatch and chicks to dry before being moved to the bigger brooder and will allow me to quickly start new batches of eggs.

Middle: brooder without heated top installed at the moment

Now that the first incubator is full, the heat is on and we have 21 days of patiently waiting to see what will arrive.  There should be chicks for everyone in the family to enjoy as there are eggs from different varieties of Cochins- Blue, black, splash, and gold laced.  We also have eggs from our light Brahma and Silver laced wyandotte.

Grow babies, Grow!

Spring Cleaning

I"m not quite sure what happened to winter this year as it seems to have passed us by.  Here it is February and my plants are all blooming and green shoots are growing everywhere!   We took the opportunity of the great weekend weather and went to work spring cleaning our biggest coop that houses our Standard Cochins.

After a couple hours of shoveling out the old shavings, dusting for any pests, and adding some new bedding the cleaning was almost done.  Only thing left was to add some new nesting boxes as our chicks from last spring have finally started laying.  I'm excited about using the wire baskets for the new nest boxes as they should last a long time and be extremely easy to clean.  Both are huge pluses.   The girls seem to really like the new nest boxes too.  In less than 12 hours we had 2 eggs waiting on us

One coop down, two to go....