We have 2 incubators going right now. Just barnyard variety.

I just installed 2 packages of honey bees today. Hope they stick around and build their numbers.

How exciting. I always loved it when my grandparents had new baby chicks.

Reed, Our hens hatched very late chicks back in September and are setting on more eggs now. I don't really want any more chicks, but it makes a couple of our broody hens happy if they are allowed to hatch out some every year so we let them keep a few eggs to set on. Ours aren't anything terribly special--Welsummers (I love their dark brown eggs), Auraucanas (mostly pale olive green and pale blue eggs), one very old Polish crested (black with a white crest), and a lot of Mille Fleur d'uccles (very small eggs) but they have wonderful personalities and are well-trained to put themselves up in their coop before sunrise after free-ranging all day.

I do love chicks, but when we let our hens hatch their own eggs, it seems like we get three useless (sorry, gentlemen, no personal insult intended----one coop only needs one rooster) cockerels for every hen who'll eventually lay eggs.

I cannot even go into the feed stores during chick week (which seems to last a month) because I want to buy all the chicks, keets, ducklings and goslings and bring them home.

How old are yours and are you raising them in a brooder or just letting them follow their mama around the coop and chicken run. We've done it both ways in the past.

Robert, Bees! I love bees. I'll be following your adventures to see how it works out for you. I want to have bees but have been dragging my feet because I don't want to have to take care of yet another group of living creatures. I'm all maxed out on needy, demanding animals. Now, when Tim retires in a few years, I think HE should have bees.

Dawn

Dawn, next thing you know, you'll be saying there should only be one man in the county (it would be easier for you ladies, I'm sure..no one tracking mud into the clean floor) :)

I have baby chicks! I just bought them at Atwoods (removing those tag things was so stressful) 3 weeks ago Saturday. I bought 5, but one died. Our power went out for a couple of days after the storms 2 Wednesdays ago. I took the chicks to my Mom's (who had power) but one of them never really bounced back after those few hours without their lamp. So now I have 4 chicks. I want two more. There's a place near Bethel Acres that has ameraucana chicks that are about the same age as my girls. I just don't know when I'll have time to pick them up. Chickens are new to me. Do you think my girls will get along with two new girls?

I'm not sure what my chicks are--they were all in a brooder together, except one and I believe she's a little older. She's always been bigger and had a different color tag. I think one is a black sex link and another is a red sex link-those aren't anything special from what I've read. The other is blonde, but not reddish blonde. The last one is a funny little thing--her personality. She looks just like a australorp chick, but she has feathered legs. The one that died was smaller and a brownish color--she may have been an easter egger. The Atwoods guy was trying to talk to me about her, but another demanding customer was trying to choose a Rhode Island Red and had her phone and his phone looking up pictures to compare.

Chicks are very exciting.

My sister has chickens, I forgot how wonderful fresh eggs are. I told her she had to keep it up. Ha'!!!! I know this sounds silly but I am terrified of chickens. I know country born and raised but can't do chickens.

We raise purebred Buckeyes. They are wonderful mothers. I have one hen, out in her own little pen, with 8 chicks right now. A couple of weeks ago we hatched 90 in the incubator. I sold them via Craigs List. Presently we have another 150 eggs going in the incubator and another hen setting on eggs. Extra roosters? No problem! My wife wants me to hatch 100 Buckeye chicks this year, just for us, so we have a rooster a week, for the pot.

We LOVE our Muscovy ducks! They are laying eggs the size of goose eggs, and lots of them. I shoot for 20-30 hatched each year. Duck is our party food. We raise a white production strain which dresses out beautifully.

It was a hard winter for bees. We lost more hives than what made it. But the survivors are building up very rapidly. Dawn, you are probably making the right decision. I dearly love beekeeping. But it is a lot more work than most people realize.

Reed, what kind of incubator are you using? What kind of chicks are you hatching?

George
Tahlequah, OK

George, do you sell ducks or duck eggs? If so, when, and how much?

I do. If you can believe it, I sold out this winter and even have a waiting list for ducklings. But if you have a means to hatch them, I could sell you some eggs anytime. They're laying like crazy. I'd give you a very good deal. The main problem is transport. Shipping is quite expensive, when done right. And, it drops the hatch rate to at or below 33%. Still, it's worth it. All one needs is a pair, or even better, a trio, and they'll be off and running with these. One of my favorite sayings is: "Sometimes the best chicken... is a duck."

dbarron, When we turned our screened-in porch into a fully enclosed, proper sunroom a couple of years ago, we turned one part of it into a proper mudroom wit a boot tray and shoe shelves and hanging racks for coats, with shelves for hats and gloves. I LOVE it. The mudroom catches so much mud and dirt that used to make it into the house, and with two firefighters in the family, there's always lots of dirty, sooty muddy, shoes, boots and socks. I It helps that a lot of the dirt and mud are left in the mudroom instead of being tracked all over the house. Now, if only I could convince Tim to build a mini Mud Room at the doorway on the opposite side of the house that leads out into the dog yard. Our dogs track in more mud than the people ever have.

Living in the country is hysterically entertaining though. Yesterday when I opened the front door to let a cat go out, three banty chickens tried to run indoors. I don't know why. Just to see if they could I guess. I'm also astonished at how often a hummingbird will fly in an open door. Why? We feed them outside. Invariably they settle on a blade of the ceiling fan and ride it around and around the room while a cat or two go crazy trying to figure out how to jump out and nab the hummingbird. I have to put the cats in another room behind a closed door and turn off the fan and then catch the hummingbird and release it back outdoors. Then the cats sulk all day because I didn't let them catch the hummingbird that was foolish enough to venture indoors.

One of my worst country living experiences (out of many) was one day when I was out working in the garden in 2009 and looked up and saw about 25 head of cattle running straight for me and the garden. I am pretty sure my simple little woven wire fence wouldn't have stopped them. However, we had an outer fence on one side only (the road side, from whence escaped cattle tend to come) with three strands of barbed wire and that diverted them. I had visions of being trampled, but it didn't happen. It took about a month of odd cattle appearances/disappearances for us to figure out whose cows they were and how they were making it onto our property---seemingly appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing as quickly. Once we alerted the rancher, whose land did not directly abut our land, he checked his water gaps and found a problem and fenced it and I haven't been visited by a herd of cows since. We've also been visited by goats, but not in a few years. There's also an escaped pea fowl roaming the area. Its owners and passers by have seen it on our property but I haven't, making me wonder if they were seeing the female wild turkey that hung around here with the injured leg until she healed. She might have looked like a pea fowl to someone driving up the road. Never a dull moment here. It is a zoo or a circus here just about every day.

George, I did a lot of bee research before concluding it was more work than I was willing to take on until Tim retires and is here to help me more with the property and the animals. We have tons of native bees to do pollination (and all the hollies are in bloom and bees are everywhere around them this week) so we don't "need" bees because there aren't any around, but I want bees for the honey.

Dawn

I had to pass on the hummingbird story...too hilarious. They're funny birds, my parents fed a huge flock when I was a teenager. If the feeders ran dry, a hummingbird would seek me out and hover in front of my face (2-3 feet)..they found me gardening and they even found me about an eighth of a mile away at the school bus stop. I wasn't usually the one to fill the feeder, and I always wondered why they chose me?

George, I do have an incubator, but I'm not quite ready for the ducks. I have wanted some for a long time, but keep putting it off. As soon as I get things in order I will give you a shout. I might even be willing to come down your way and pick up eggs. I don't have room for many, but I think my son would like some as well. Al did a couple of dozen chicken eggs in our incubator last fall and it could probably have held a few more. Thanks.

dbarron, That's a cute story. The hummers definitely know who "their" people are. Mine come and sit on a tomato cage or on the fence and watch me work in the garden. That's part of their routine, but if their feeders are empty, they fly in circles around my head and if I ignore them, they hover right in front of my face.

I think your hummers were smart enough to know that if they let you know they needed the feeders filled, you'd tell your parents, perhaps? Who knows. They are really smart though. I always know which ones are returnees from previous years because if I hang the feeders in new spots in the spring, the returnees keep going back to the old spot where the feeders were the previous year.

And, to all you gentlemen out there, I want to make it clear that my comment about one male per coop were strictly poultry-related----not human-related. More than one rooster leads to no good---lots of posturing and chest-bumping and shoving and fighting. Rooster wars. Trying to convince Tim that there's only room for one rooster per coop is difficult. He thinks we should have however many roosters hatch out----but he isn't the one at home with them trying to break up the rooster wars.

Dawn