Monday, July 12, 2010

Baby Chicks

Well, we've been incubating eggs for the last 3 weeks. Yes, Travis got this crazy idea, because someone gave him some eggs. So, of course, I was left with turning duty when the automatic egg turner didn't end up working. I had to turn the eggs 3 times a day, make sure the temp was within .1 degree of 99.5, and continually add water to make sure the humidity was good. Here's the incubator.
You can actually see some of the unhatched eggs in there on the right.
It's really quite amazing. That's all I did, and now vualla! There are baby chicks! Today they started "pipping" through their shells, and 3 are now currently free. You aren't supposed to help in any way or they won't gain the strength they need to survive. Not even open the incubator. It was kind of hard watching through the top and seeing the little chicks flip upside down and struggle. I had to walk away! I would not be a good mother hen!
There's a little chicky, all hatched. It's amazing how fast they grow strong. When they first come out, they can't even stand up. Then within 30 min they can stand up for 1 min or so. It's a miracle.
Now Travis has this crazy idea that we'll be incubating turkey eggs. Not just a few, like 25! But not all will make it to hatching. We started with 6 turkey eggs this time, and none made it.

Here's sweet little Tustin at swim lessons. He was so excited this day, he had a smile the whole time!
Trayton was actually not feeling well, and sat out. But I'll get pictures next week.


Here he is kicking with the kick board.

This is a funny one. Get the true personality of my boys. I was taking happy "cutesy" pix of them with Naomi, and then Tustin decided to give a scary face. So I said what the hey, show me your scary faces. So here it is.

And my favorite picture for this post. Naomi just loves sucking on her fingers! But here she is actually sucking on the "Nettie/Ezra fingers"!!! I just couldn't help myself. Who knows if she'll continue, she did it once. Like Mother like daughter. I actually have a child that is somewhat remotely like me! Wow, it feels nice. :) I love her to pieces.

2 comments:

Little Holts said...

Love that last picture of Naomi! I found John like that a few days ago. And Lizzie has started sucking on her hair when she sucks her thumb.

Mom White use to incubate eggs and sell about half the chicks. She always called it her chicken money.

MaryLue said...

Tell Tustin and Trayton they scared me! Nettie you have such a fun family!