Project "School Incubation"...day 2 and counting...

Incubation fever strikes again! Andrew asked if we could do an incubator project with his 2nd grade class, and of course I said 'yes!'. Those of you who suffer from the chicken affliction will know that you can never say 'no' to hatching more eggs! We picked this week to set the eggs, as we have exactly four weeks of uninterrupted school between the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.

I dropped the incubator by the school on Monday to give it time to adjust to the classroom temperatures and make sure it was steady before setting the eggs on Wednesday. The kids were very curious and asked lots of great questions about the incubator, chickens and hatching eggs! The eggs were delivered on Wednesday morning to the school. I have set a few of them there and the rest here at home just in case one incubator does not perform. I'd hate to have the kids disappointed if we don't get ANY eggs to hatch! Of course, the other issue may be if we get TOO many eggs to hatch....

I'll be going back to the school every few days to check on the eggs and to talk to the kids about chickens, the parts of an egg and embryo development. It's really fun to get back in the classroom again, if only just for a few minutes! Hopefully the kids will take away some knowledge of chickens, eggs and the life cycle from all this - I'm sure they won't soon forget those fuzzy little chicks if all goes well.

In other news...The silkie babies continue to grow like little weeds. These little guys can EAT! They are getting their feathers in now, and starting to act like little adults - working out the 'pecking' order. So far I have strong suspicions that we have at least 3 roosters, but silkies can be notoriously sneaky about hiding gender, so we'll just have to see...

Hoppy, the one legged chicken is still getting along. I would like to see her growing more as she is still significantly smaller than the other chicks, but she seems perky and healthy otherwise. Thankfully the other chicks don't seem to single Hoppy out for 'unwanted' attention, so as long as she is doing OK and not getting picked on, I'm happy to leave her in the brooder with the other chicks.

There is one other chick that has developed some issues. Rascal is one of the partridge babies. I believe she has suffered a head injury, which has caused crookneck. It was much worse on Wednesday but seems to be getting slowly better. She is eating and drinking well, so it's more a wait and see game than anything else at this point. On Wednesday morning she could not hardly hold up her head and it was twisted all the way around. By this morning she can lift her head just fine, and the twist is only slight. She still has seizures or 'fits' once in a while - most often when startled - where she shakes her head and walks around backwards for a few seconds, but much less than on Wednesday. I'm optimistic she will make a good recovery!

Finally the big girls are getting closer and closer to giving us some eggs! They will be 20 weeks old on Christmas, but many times the lack of daylight will delay those first eggs coming, so I will have to be patient! Still, I've uncovered the nest boxes for them and now it's just a waiting game. Again and again I am glad I took the time and effort to cover their run. They often fly up into the netting, but can't get over the fence, thankfully! I have no doubt they'd be wanding all over the woods, and worse yet in the neighbors' yards. Since I want to be able to keep my chickens, it's important that they are good neighborly chickens (in other words, stay at HOME and stay quiet!)

They are doing really well with the cold weather - even though it's not been bitterly cold here, we have had some hard freeze mornings but they are cosy in the coop and seem to not notice the cold at all. They do enjoy their treats of sunflower seeds and scratch feed and have figured out that I'm the 'food lady'. I wish everyone was so glad to see me as they are!