Sorry for the unintended radio silence. But spring has arrived and it’s been a bit hectic. As a few of the posts in August illustrated, it is the season for babies.  We have been busy making sure the mamas and babies of all types are all close to the house so we can monitor delivery and be sure there are no predators. First up for show and tell? The chickens.

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These are our mama chickens with their little ones. Two sets of mama hens/chicks are happily free-ranging in the large chicken coop. They’ve had a few spats the mama hens but otherwise it’s all been pretty peaceful. If noisy – chicks sure do make a lot of noise. The pavo de monte (the black hen in the last of the pictures) – of which there are two – are currently in a cordoned off part of the chicken coop. They are usually out on pasture but the chicks feet are too small for the pasture coop floor. So they are currently ‘indoor hens’. We hope to change that soon.

If that was not enough chicks to keep track of, we have more:

We have an incubator that will hold 28 eggs, and our first time using it, we had 20 hatch (when we candled at 10 days, four weren’t fertile)! So now we are frantically building a brooder area for these little darlings.  Megan will be so excited to get the chicks up to the brooder the news will be sure to hit the blog!