Don't count your chickens before they hatch

After several attempts to have a hen hatch a clutch of eggs, we finally managed to produce chicks by hatching some eggs in our incubator. Yesterday we awoke to discover that our first chick had hatched and was peeping away in the incubator. Hooray! The next chick waited until this morning to make his appearance. Both are Ameraucana chicks (Ameraucana hens lay blue-green eggs), and the "paper clip on a string" sexing method tells us that the first one is a girl and the second one is a boy. We almost feel like smoking cigars in celebration; we are proud parents.

There are 5 more eggs left in the first hatch group: 2 Buttercup and 3 more Ameraucana. The second hatch group, which are due on Sunday, consists of 3 Welsummer, 1 Mottled Java, 1 Silver Marans, and about 7 Black Marans. We "candled" all 40 or so eggs in the incubator a few days ago (held them up to a strong flashlight in a dark room) and determined that around half the eggs were no longer viable. We removed those from the incubator. We've got our fingers crossed for the rest!


Girl chick, which we removed from the incubator because she started pecking on the less mobile newbie. We hope she will lay us lots of pretty colored eggs someday.


Boy chick - henpecked already. Poor guy.


Aren't they precious!

-Annie