Hatching early!!!!

So the babies are coming!!! Let me tell you they were supposed to start Thursday but they picked Tuesday. Two were hatched yesterday and one hatched over night. I spent an hour yesterday putting crates together and putting the chickens and their babies in them in the garage. Now the garage is a chicken nursery!They are so cute!!!!

Here is a little one peaking out!

They are just too cute!

Each Hen has her own cage. One hen has 1 baby and the other has 2. We will see how many actually hatch. There is a total of 10 eggs that I put under them. I seperated them because yesterday one hen took the other hens baby so they were not happy about that. Now they dont have to fight!

One Little chick

Our experiment with the 4 eggs under the chicken failed. The day after i put the eggs under her 2 eggs dissapeared! the other 2 were not fertile. So i got 5 more eggs and put them in a friends incubator. Only 1 of those eggs hatched and now we have peeps the chick.

Last week Becky gave me 10 more eggs so I have two chickens that are broody and they are laying on 5 eggs each. They are due to hatch on the 31st. Hopefully we get atleast 1 from that batch so this little chick will have a friend! The hens are sitting in the same nest together laying on there babies. If this doesnt work this time, we are done for this year. They are both getting really skinny because they don't like to eat much. They don't want to leave the eggs for very long.

I will update as soon as we have babies!!!!!!

Drill Performance

Brooke had a drill team performance at Cracker Day. We just met the group at 11am to do the performance at 12 and then had lunch and came home. It was way too hot to be hanging out there all day. It seemed to be 100 degrees out there. Willow did awesome and all the girls looked and did great! They all worked really hard all year and it was nice for them to perform for a crowd. I posted a video for all to see. It is a little shakey because I was standing on the bull shutes and they were moving.

Drill Team Performance Video

Project of the Month

This is Chelsea chicken. She is the baby we got last year and raised with the stuffed animal bunny! She is sitting in this nest because she is broody. This means she is laying on eggs, that are not hers, because she intends to hatch them out. Only problem is, we don't have roosters and it doesn't matter how long she sits there, there will be no babies!!!!

The eggs she took over were not even her eggs. They belonged to the big chickens so they were double the size of her eggs. The picture shows the big chicken egg on left and her eggs on right. Very big difference! Soooooooo.....

My friend Becky has bantam chickens and does have a rooster so she brought me 4 of her eggs to trade out for the big chicken eggs so Chelsea will not be sitting for nothing! I hope they are fertile! So we wait now for 21 days to see if Chelsea will become a mother to babies that are not hers. In the mean time we have to take her off her eggs 2 times a day to make her eat and drink because she insists that she is not leaving the eggs.

I really don't know how I get myself into these things but it is what it is! I should really be worrying about my math final in 3 weeks but to be honest, this is more fun! I should really think about changing my career plan to being an AG teacher, but thats probably not a good choice! Anyway I will keep every one posted. I will check the eggs in 10 days and see if I can see a glimpse of the little guys in the eggs by using a light.

The Computer Curse

Most of you know that I am in school and this is my second year. This year has been my most challenging so far. When I started school last year, Tony bought me a laptop to do all my work on since I was taking online classes as well as in class. It was a very nice computer and I loved it. Well 1 week before I started school this January, My laptop crashed! It is only 1 year old and 9 days out of warranty. Needless to say I had a major breakdown and had no idea how I was going to start school. Especially when the online class was a computer class on Office 2010!!!! So I race it down to the computer guy begging for help. He said it would take a few days. He called me several days later, we are now down to about 4 days till class, and said to come in because he thinks it is fixed. I get there and he turns the computer on to show me how well it works but the screen is black! Really?! I knew then that I was in trouble. He says he needs to keep it and look into it more.

Tony decides we will go buy another computer so I can start school and when my computer is fixed he will take it because he needs a computer to start back to school himself.So we go to Walmart to get a new one but this time get the extended warranty. Don't need anymore breakdowns for school!From day one I hate the computer, it just wasn't like my other one. 1 week later computer man calls and says to come get computer, it is not fixable because it could be 1 of 3 things and it would cost more than the computer cost us originally. Now I'm really freaked out because now Tony still needs a computer and that one was only a year old.

Well time allowed me to chill until my new computer, which is only 3 months old, crashes on me this week!!! I have 3 PowerPoint presentations due Friday and have a broken computer. I call the warranty, they send me to Dell and I get to talk to people that can barely speak English. They walk me through a bunch of tests and say the computer is fine. I just about lost it, the computer is not fine.They say they fixed it so today once again it has crashed. I made Tony do the call relay tonight, they found 5 crashes to the driver and now say it is fixed. We will see!!! I'm using it now so we will see if it can hold up.

So I am now sitting here waiting till midnight because fall registration opens the 4th and I need an online class that has only 27 openings.I really need this class!!!  I have 2 classes left and then I can apply for radiography. I am hoping the computer will be OK and allow me to register. Mean while we have ordered computer # 3 that will be deliver Thursday so I can at least finish this computer class, in the event this computer goes out again, and allow Tony to start back to school next month. I think I have for sure been slapped with the Computer Curse!!!!

New Horse

This is our new horse, Summer! Brooke needed a horse to move up to because she is getting too big for Willow and Ashlyn would like to have her pony back! HaHa! We have only had her for a week and she seems to be a very nice horse. It is a big adjustment for all of us because she is much younger than the other horses we have owned and she is also much bigger than our other horses. We are learning more and more about her everyday and are hoping she will be a nice horse for Brooke to grow with. The journey begins and hopefully it leads us into many wonderful things!

Sheep Show

So Saturday Night Brooke showed Lily in Showmanship. It is judged on the way the person handles the sheep and sometimes they ask them questions or feel for how clean they are.

She did a really good job. There were 41 kids so they split the class into 4 separate classes and just brought back the top 3 or 4 from all 4 classes do judge the final class. Brooke didn't get called back but she did receive a red ribbon and she will receive $40 for that class.

On Sunday we pretty much spent the day at the show ring. It was the day of the sheep show. They judge on the quality and the way the sheep are built. It started at 11 am so we just had to hang around till her class came about.

Lily waits patiently for her class!

Brooke is in the center with the white shirt.

Walking the sheep so the judge can see a side view.

Lily is one of the smaller sheep in the class

Brooke ended up with 7th out of 9 so she wasn't last. Lily just wasn't as big as the other sheep. Alot of them are pregnant so they do give the illusion that they are bigger. The judge did give her a blue ribbon so she will receive $50. Brooke had alot of fun!

While we waited, me and Tony took turns floating Ashlyn around the fair to look at things. Mostly the chicken barn and the milking parlor! There were alot of chickens for sale so she kept going over to tell me she wanted to buy another chicken. We have no more room for chickens so that would require a new coop. She says well just build one!!!

She liked watching the chicks hatch. They are so cute!

Alot of chickens to look at!!!!

We didn't get done till about 5pm so we ate dinner at the fair and headed home about 6:30. It was a very good trip and a wonderful experience for the girls.