candling on day 16

We're less than a week away from hatch day! Normal incubation is 21 days but every time I've hatched they've come on day 19 so we're getting close!

I used this idea to make our own candling station in the bathroom today. I used what we had around the house. An Ikea lamp similar to the one in the link, a black turtle neck and some cardboard. Easy as that!

Above is a bad picture but you get the idea. You can see the air sack on the left side of the egg. if you look closely you can see veining and a dark spot (that's the chick!) We candled using a flashlight at 7 days and below are the results from both candling sessions.

Day 7: 11 yes, 1 no, 2 questionable

Day 16: 9 yes, 2 no, 3 questionable

Getting very excited to see our results this year! We'll be set up on Ustream once the action starts... link soon!

2012 garden

it's garden time!

Seems like it warmed up early this year and the garden is already almost finished. We have the zucchini to plant and then we'll be done. Today the kids helped plant the tomatoes.... 

We're not doing much different this year. The most noticeable difference is the fence which our addition of chickens has deemed necessary. We we're offered the strawberries from our neighbor who has a ton of them and they seem to have transplanted nicely. 

we'll check back in w/ the garden later this season. YUM!

Project Hatch: year 4

It was April 2009 when we hatched our first chicks. looking back the kids were so little!! We've hatched every year since and I think it's safe to say that this is our Spring thing. We're not even able to keep whatever we hatch this year (we have homes lined up) because we already have 5 and 5 is enough! Each year we get eggs from a different location. This year is the first we've received fertile eggs in the mail. Very exciting! So, today we start with 14 eggs in the incubator... i'll be back in 3 weeks for more updates!