Seven days to The Hatching!

Tonight it will be seven days until The Hatching. Yesterday, I got a 5 lb bag of chick started food in the mail. I went to the local feed mill, and asked for prices. I can get a 40 kg bag of chick starter for a little over $10.00. But 40 kg??? My chicks will be eating chick starter for years! It kind of defeats the whole starter part of the Chick Starter.

I've still no idea how many chicks we'll get. I swing between expecting them all to hatch (eeep!) and fearing that none will hatch.(double eeep!) Life will, mostly likely, meet me somewhere in the middle.

We found a nest of about 10 eggs in the shed, behind some boards. We've been collecting 5 or 6 eggs a day, and the fact that there is a stockpile means that more of the hens are laying than we thought. We have 7 hens. One, Uhura, we've just never expected anything from, egg-wise. She has always been a bit fragile, shy, scruffy, sort of like the snot-nosed kid in grade school that always gets bullied and hangs out in the library at lunch time. Last summer, I used treats and coaxing to get her to come out of the coop, and she is pretty much as free-range as the rest now. She has special privileges, though. When I'm giving the chickens bread, she sits right by me and gets hers hand fed to her. Sometimes she'll sit on my lap for treats while the others scramble to grab the bits I throw out to them. When Uhura was more timid and bully bait, she didn't do well in the melee for treats. Now she probably could hold her own, but she's a pampered princess and doesn't need to anymore. She has only started laying eggs this spring, which is good news.

When we were choosing eggs to go in the incubator, Marc and I both wanted to make sure that we had some of Uhura's eggs to add in. It's a bit odd, as she is not the finest specimen of chicken-hood. But she was needy and a bit weak and so we put more effort into her and so she's special. We want to see her chicks. High tech geneticists, we're not.

If the chicks hatch next week-end, we'll be in the midst of the busiest week-end that we've had in a long time. It figures. It will all work out, though. I love new experiences. Especially when they involve fluffy, wobbly new creatures.

Mini, as dog of the family, protector and on-duty big sister, will most likely be adopting a permanent air of martyrdom. It's going take a lot of Scooby snacks to make up for kittens AND chicks....