Long light evenings

 We love these long, light summery evenings...

Anna has a permanent grass cutting job...

and we get to catch up on a bit of long overdue garden maintenance....

We only have one pair of safety goggles so the swimming goggles are pressed into service as we never turn down a helper...

This tree doesn't need watering, the new wild rose cuttings do, but it's preferable to watering his brother which happened moments earlier!

Play goes on way past 9pm but with no school to get up for we don't need to worry about the time.

 The new chicks have a short outing from the brooder...

and a sunset draws the evening to a close...

A bit of baking...

Industrious children, busy baking...

but a five year old left a little too long has great fun...

with a very tempting bag of  flour...

 He's not too impressed when his sister tries to mop him up though!

 The chicks we hatched a while ago belonged to friends and have now gone back to them. Beth had also ordered a dozen Orpington eggs, both chocolate and lavender, which arrived from the UK a few weeks ago and have been in the incubator. Every few days the eggs are candled ( a bright torch shone through them in a dark room so you can see what is going on inside the egg ), so you can monitor progress. It is important that any eggs not developing correctly are removed from the incubator as they can go bad and explode thus risking infecting the remaining eggs. Unfortunately at day 8 we noticed blood rings developing on three of the eggs which is indicative of embryo death and by day 14, eight of the twelve eggs needed to be removed as they obviously weren't viable.
Hatching these eggs is Beth's project so she made the final decision about at which point to remove the eggs from the incubator. As the eggs were fertile and had had developing embryos she decided she wanted to bury them in the garden under a tree.














 Beth bought a tree and she and Caitlin dug a hole...

and the eggs were buried...

She also wanted to write a little note to bury with the eggs and asked the others to do the same.

Another tree in the garden, more memories.

 Every couple of weeks or so we get to mind a wonderful little three year old girl who has downs syndrome. She is full of fun and the guys love helping to care for her. Orla and Tiarnan especially enjoy getting a chance to be 'big sister' or 'big brother' as it is a role they don't usually get to take on.....

Chicks 2

Another day, another miracle...

More exciting than eating dinner...

Chicks

Yesterday was an exciting day of watching and waiting....

which was rewarded with seeing this little guy hatch out...

followed a couple of hours later by this one.

We left them in the incubator overnight to dry out and then transfered them into the brooder this morning.


These little chicks are seriously cute.

So today will be another day of watching....

with maybe the odd quick cuddle...

amazing...

An eggciting day

A few months ago Beth won a photography competition with a photo of Wilson. Her prize was a years supply of dog food which she then sold as our dogs are on a raw food diet. She decided that this unexpected windfall would be spent setting herself up to hatch chicks to add to our flock. Therefore she is now the owner of a new hen coop and egg incubator. She decided that she would like Orpington eggs which are on order from the UK. However a few weeks ago a friend who knew of this plan rang to say she had some possibly fertile eggs from new chickens she wasn't expecting to lay yet and could we do something with them?
So the eggs were put in the incubator...

and kept a very close eye on...

 It got quite complicated as each time our friend gave us what she thought would be the last egg another was laid. This meant we were adding them into the incubator at different times which is not ideal as the eggs have different requirements according to the days of development.
In order to check on progress we candled the eggs every few days. This means holding a bright torch to them in a dark room. Seeing the first fertile one was very exciting.

We had ten eggs in total but only four were fertile so the other six were removed. Chicken eggs hatch at 21 days and they are meant to go into lock down for the last 3 days. This means the incubator must not be opened as a rush of cold air and loss of humidity can cause the chicks to become 'shrink wrapped' in the inner membrane and they won't hatch. They also stop being turned at this point so the chicks can get into position to start pipping their way out of the egg. As we had one incubator and 4 eggs at different stages it has been a bit tricky trying to work out how to optimise the conditions for some without damaging the others. Our solution was to go into lock down 3 days ago, removing the first two eggs from the turning rack and increasing the humidity slightly as today is day 21 for these first two. There was then great excitement when both eggs pipped this morning!

This first little hole allows the chick to breathe, having used up the air sac, and it then sleeps for several hours to get it's strength up for the big break out. They also begin chirping at this stage.

 There was also a bit of a panic to get a brooder ready. This was achieved by washing up an old gerbil cage and the cats are going to have to give up their infra red lamp in the garage!

As soon as Daddy got in the door for lunch he was brought over to check progress.

So watch this space and hopefully they'll be a couple of new baby chicks to see tomorrow...