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.