It’s cold out there today. Cold enough to numb your hands and face. It even snowed a little in the afternoon. It’s supposed to get into the single digits tonight, so we did the “cold weather routine”, including warm water for the chickens in their coop; deep straw in the ducks’ coop; warm water and extra hay for the rabbits outside.
Both of the NZ does are indoors tonight because tomorrow is (according to the calendar) kindling day…if they’re pregnant. There are promising signs, but these two would be first-time mothers, so may not know exactly what to do with the nest boxes we put in their kindling cages. They come from a line that has large litters – their litter had 11, and all survived, so we hope they’ll be as successful in raising their own kits. We’ll check on them tomorrow to see if there are any new arrivals.
The new chicks – indoors in their brooder – are adorable. They all seem to be doing well, and we can’t even tell which one is the Leghorn chick we assisted. They scurry around, eating, drinking, having their minor scuffles. The pecking order seems to start early, and some are definitely more mellow than others. “Chick TV” is so entertaining!
We enjoyed the first hatch so much, we set 18 more eggs in the incubator today. You know the routine now: candling in 7 days, lockdown at 18, and if all goes well, hatching at 21. Updates to come!
