New Life..

Aah. The farm.
You just gotta love it.
New life!
And the chance to capture
the sweetest pics in the world.

I almost made a fatal error,

but I was lucky enough to realize my mistake in time to correct it.

The potting shed where we brood chicks and where the Silkies live

flooded a bit during all of the heavy rain.

Sunday I lifted out the broody hen and her eggs,

shoveled out all of the yuck and replaced it with new, dry shavings.

I carefully placed the mom and eggs back into her corner of choice

and all was well. The broody took the shake up well and continued to happily growl on her nest.

I heard peeping yesterday while I was doing chores and went to check again in the evening.

What I found was close to a disaster.

One of the eggs.. the first egg, had tried to hatch

but the membrane was too dry and had hardened into to unbreakable leather.

Egads!!! I had put the broody and eggs back into super dry shavings!

Eggs need humidity, and a lot of it, to hatch properly.

I quickly handed that egg off to Sweet Husband

to take to the kitchen sink and I grabbed a washcloth to dampen

and place under the remaining eggs in hopes that it would be enough

moisture to hatch the remaining eggs.

It was.

The egg that Sweet Husband hatched in the kitchen

is the fluffy cuteness you see in my palm

and I helped the other two a wee bit this morning.

Whew. That was a close one.

So, lesson to all:

If you put new bedding under a broody hen in the final stages of hatching...

add a moist cloth to raise the humidity.

Here is the rest of the hatching process:

And that was all that broody would stand for!
Can you tell which one is my favorite?

A Silver Silkie!

Oh joy!!!!!