New Fur Buddy?

A couple of weeks ago, as I was letting our (indoor) dog out for a potty break, I spotted a stray dog behind our house. He was eating the cat's food and there wasn't a cat to be seen!! We have over a dozen or so cats, so this in itself was pretty weird. Usually you can't walk down off our front steps without tripping over the kitties!! :)

So I got Gracie back in the house without her noticing the other dog. She is almost 12 years old and doesn't notice things like she used to. And the I went out to see if the other dog was one that I recognized or not. We really don't have neighbors, only a few houses here and there and most of them are not being lived in right now. However, the dog was gone when I went back to check things out.

Gracie (the yellow lab) with Titus when he was still alive.

The next day I noticed that the cats were all up in the trees, and they couldn't hardly be coxed down. I would see the dog off and on and this went on for another day or two. We started feeding him once we knew for sure that he wasn't hurting the cats, they just didn't like him (which is good to know since they are so very friendly with Gracie, but we have coyotes out here and we didn't know if they would be scared enough to get to shelter). The dog was super scared of us though, he would watch us very carefully, but if we moved even a little, he would run off.

'Spades' sitting in the shade of the storage building.  He's made friends now with a few of the cats.

It took a little over a week before my dh was able to get him to come up and be petted. He still will only let our dd walk up to him to get petted or to feed him, he stands off a ways with me, but if I stand still he'll come up to me when he's ready. We have learned to show him our hands and make quiet slow movements and that seems to be helping him feel safer. Now we are starting to work on introducing him to Gracie. Last night was the first time dd was able to get Gracie to be calm enough for the other dog (dd is calling him Spades) to come up and sniff around. Gracie loves all animals (you should see her touch noses with the neighbor cows!!), but she gets really excited and that scares 'Spades'. I think we are gaining his trust a little at a time, but he is still very nervous. Makes me wonder why since he does have a collar on (no tags and the collar has a piece of broken rope tied to it). We've asked a few people if they know who's dog this might be, but we are being careful since it looks like he might have been abused. We will be glad to keep him if we can't find an owner, but we are torn on how hard to look for that owner.

He's getting a little better at trusting us:) You can see the piece of rope hanging from his neck.

Dd is also working on getting him to not be afraid of the leash. He was terrified of it the first time she took it out. We won't chain him up, he'll be free to have the run of the place and he has shelter in the lean-to if he needs it, but we may have need to take him to the vet or something like that in the future, so it would be good for him to not be afraid of the leash if we need to use it. So far he has shown himself to be a very sweet dog and I'm hoping we can either find his previous owner or gain his trust so he feels safe here:)

Brr!! It's Cold Out There!!!

Yesterday morning I decided to brave the cold for a bit and get some pictures of the snow drifts. It only took a couple min to realize why they say that -15 degree windshield is dangerous!! My hands started hurting within minutes. Also the cats weren't happy about waiting those few extra minutes to get their food!!! But I got a few pictures anyway, fed the cats and the (office) bunny and got back in quick!!

As I said, earlier on Tuesday, we had a nice even coat of snow, around 8 inches. It was really pretty and smooth and it covered over the dead winter landscape. Then the wind started. We pretty much live in the wide open, for miles there isn't much to stop the wind from building and building. So when it gets windy here, we get the full force of it. We went from the ground fully cover in snow to this...

 

 Bare spots and drifts. Still, the way the wind chisels patterns on the top has it's own beauty too...

 I'm not a cold weather person, but if we have to have this cold, miserable weather, then I'm glad we got some snow this time as well. But now I'm ready for it to all be gone and spring to arrive!! Here's to hoping that silly groundhog was WRONG about having 6 more weeks of winter!!

Winter Wonderland

We had a cold, snowy day yesterday. It's really pretty out there, though we are stuck at home at the moment:) Gee, darn, can't go anywhere. Must stay home. Hmm. :) I think I can live with that!!

Thankfully the snow started around 2:00 am Tuesday morning, so when hubby got up to check on things, it was already bad enough that he decided to stay home. He has an hour drive to work, so he likely would have had to turn around and come home shortly after he got there. Later we found out that the state nearly shut down the highway he takes to get there and back, so he may have found himself stuck at his parents' for the night (they live closer to his work).

Some pics from before the wind started and moved everything around again...

Out back toward the 'office/storage' building. This was after hubby scraped off a space so the cats had  a place to eat and I could get into the building. This is where the 2nd rabbit lives, so I had to go feed her too:)

Cars and shop/barn building

We think we got around 10 inches, which is a decent snow storm for our area. Everything looks different now. We have bare ground showing with huge drifts at this point. Our driveway is pretty much closed off and I don't know what the road looks like. We are rural enough that no one will be coming down the road to plow it for a few days if ever so hubby will likely take the tractor down to break through any bigger drifts that our vehicles can't get through. I'm glad he called in today as well so he can get some snow moved around here:) Maybe by tomorrow we will feel like we can get out of here if we need/want to. Until then, I'm thinking today will be a nice quiet day of school and stitching. Our poor, poor dd doesn't even get a snow day!! LOL Actually she didn't even ask about it, so I guess we didn't need one :)

Maybe I can get out there today and get some pictures of the snow drifts. The wind seems to chisel the tops of them and they are so pretty. Not sure I want to be out there long though, even though it's sunny and looks nice, today's high will only get to 8 degrees!! Maybe I'll just stay in:)

A New Fur Baby

Actually it is my daughter's fur-baby. She is just so cute!!

Her official name is Nikki (according to her papers), but my dd liked the name Nutmeg better, so that is what we are calling her. She needs some extra work and special cuddle time as she is still pretty jumpy, but dd is really doing well with her and she is coming along nicely.

Nutmeg will eventually be introduced to this handsome fellow...



Fargo:)

We are keeping them completely separate right now as Nutmeg isn't quite old enough to be a momma, and Fargo is just a wee bit too eager to meet her!! We are hoping for several cute babies from these two to build up dd's collection for showing for 4-H.



No longer in a drought :0)

In my last post I mentioned that my dd and I had been stuck at home for about a week a few weeks back due to flooding. We got more rain within a week than I think we have gotten in the past couple years all together. We had been in a pretty severe drought before this. The first day of rain brought 7 inches within about 4 hours and the ground was just too hard to absorb all the water!!!

 

This was just the beginning!!

 

These pictures don't show nearly how bad it ended up getting. Do you see the two power poles way in the distance? Yes, one of them leans over a bit:) That is the end of our driveway. It was completely underwater. And I ended up having to move the car once the water got past the bottom of the hub-caps.

While the water did get higher than we've ever seen it out here, flooding across our driveway isn't uncommon in years of normal rain as all the fields around us drain into our yard and then under the bridge across the road as it heads for the river, it just usually doesn't last very long. And this time we had water within a few feet from the front porch and it actually got into the metal shop building, but not so much to hurt anything.

Unfortunately, my hubby was at work when this all started. I called him to come home as I was pretty sure the road was under water (it was). By the time he got home, the road was partially washed out. It took him about an hour to find a way to drive the last mile to the house. All the roads to the house are dirt and 3 of the 4 ways in had roads that were washed out. So he took his little car and 4-wheeled it down the only road that was super muddy, but not under water. He ended up having to park in the road at the end of our driveway and walk up to the house as the water was knee high and flowing too fast across the driveway.

All would have been fine after that, but my hubby decided later that day to go ahead and get the car up  the house. The water had decended some, but not enough!! He sucked up a bunch of water into the air intake and shelled the engine. So guess what he got to do this past weekend? He 'got' to put another engine in the car!! :)

All-in-all, we needed the rain, and while the flooding can cause some headaches, it is nice to have the wildlife back that comes with the rain. I don't remember the last time the grass/weeds and trees were still green in August/September. We even saw fish swimming 'up-stream' across our driveway!! The bullfrogs could have deafened you, and I wish I could get a picture of the tiny toads that are EVERYWHERE!! Some of them no more than a half inch or so long. They must of come from the river as well.  My hubby said he didn't understand why anyone would live in town when you can have all this fun!!! (he can be a bit sarcastic sometimes!! LOL)

FIRE!!!

Around here it is harvest time. We live in an area where wheat is all around us (yes the very wheat that I'm allergic to:). I love how pretty and green it is in the spring and the golden color it gets to be when it's ripe and ready for harvest. 

But the one thing about living with agriculture all around that has always made me nervous is once the crops are harvested, how dry the land is. Fire is a huge concern this time of year, usually it is fireworks we are worried about right about now. We have never been directly effected before this year, this weekend was the first time we had a close call. We took a day-trip on Saturday and when we came back home that afternoon, we noticed lots of smoke. Farmers often burn off their wheat stubble, but this day was very windy and we thought someone had a field get out of control. This first fire was about 5 miles from our house, so not a direct concern for us, but we drove around to see what was going on.

We first realized it was not a controlled fire when we saw that one of the fields being burnt was uncut wheat, about 200 acres of it!! We then saw that along-side the highway was a camper that had been burnt to the ground and some people standing around a truck that was also partially burnt (just the back of the truck, no one was hurt). That's when I noticed that there was another fire closer to our place, so we drove home, hoping that it wasn't as close as it looked. The second fire was directly north of our house, by about 1 mile, but thankfully the train tracks and a paved road kept it from jumping across and getting any closer to us.

All in all, around 600 or so acres burnt, but no one got hurt. Only 2 houses were in danger, and only bits of their yards ever caught on fire, the houses were all safe. I think this year we will skip doing any fireworks at all as we've had enough fire for the time being!! :)

Winter weather and a hard week

As we live in the central States, we were part of the winter weather that came through last week. I'm not one who likes the cold but it really is beautiful when it snows:) We got a little over a foot of snow, which is more than we've had in a couple years now. We really needed this snow, so even though we were trapped here for a bit, until hubby got the tractor out, this really is a blessing for us.

 

Two days after the snow we woke up to frost all over everything. It was really pretty with the sun shining on it. I was happy to have woken early enough to get some pictures of it. Our dog Gracie is in the picture above.

 

More pics of the frost on the trees. There was almost an inch of it all over the branches. 

 



And our sad news that I've been eluding to... Our dog Titus - the chocolate lab - had been feeling ill. We took him into the E.R. vet early Tuesday morning where they started tests. It took a full day but they found a tumor on his heart. The sack around his heart was filled with fluid and the rest of him was swollen with fluid as well. There wasn't anything that could be done that wouldn't have ended in him dying within days or at the most a couple weeks. So we choose to have him put down so he wouldn't suffer. During the snowstorm, my hubby and dd dug a hole and now he is here forever. This has been really hard on us, but especially our dd.

Well, now we are getting ready for another snow storm. Again, much needed moisture, so it is a blessing - or so I keep having to tell myself. :) This time we are a bit more prepared, though really hoping we get as lucky as last week and are able to keep our power up and running!!!

Tomorrow I will be back and posting on February's WIPocalypse.

Unscheduled Post :)

Tonight's post will not be what I had expected to post today. I had planned to make some homemade bread and post on that, however something went wrong with it. Not sure if it was that I used a bit more oil instead of the egg it called for (because I wasn't thinking and feed our daughter the last of the eggs for lunch), or if the yeast wasn't active enough. I went ahead and baked it even though I knew pretty much right away that there was a problem. I ended up with baked dough loaves. Like really dense, flat, warm dough :)

So instead of that huge mess I made today (maybe I'll try it again tomorrow), I will use a writing prompt from NaBloPoMo. Today's is...

Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tell us about your favourite pet

Not sure this is super interesting to all of you, but it does make for an easy post for me:)

We've had lots of animals since we moved out here. Some have been small and very fluffy cute.

 

 
Some more that were tiny and so cute:) These were born 2 summers ago and we still have all but 2 of them. One went to our niece and one ran off.

Some have been bigger. These were a lot smaller when we got them, but still a lot bigger than the
kitties or chicks.

Some we've had for a long time. Gracie, the yellow lab is 10 years old and Titus, the chocolate lab is 8 years old.

 

And some that are new to the family. (Fargo the Holland Lop).

We've had lots more animals, including goats, ducks and even a baby skunk (for a few hours anyway, we took it to the zoo).

But my favorite is this guy. I even let him sleep on my stitching basket:0) We have lots of cats around here and I really do care about all of them, but every now and then we get one that is super cuddley. This is the first one that my hubby (an offical non-cat guy) has allow one indoors. 'Paws' still likes to spend some of his day outside, but he also loves to crawl up in bed with me in the mornings after hubby goes off to work:)

So what about you? What is your favorite pet?

Week 3 - Crafty Project

I can't believe I am actually getting some of my old, half-done projects finished up!!! It really feels great knowing that some of my ideas are going to be used instead of just sitting around:)  So this week I finished this scarf that I started long ago - maybe a couple years ago? Not sure, but now that it's done I need to decide what to do with it.

 I don't really like the color for me so I had been thinking about putting it in an Operation Christmas Child box or finding some other place that would take warm winter items for those in need. I may still do that, however I got some news today that means that I might possibly want it for myself after all.

My dh called me this morning to tell me that a friend of his will be going to a cattle auction tomorrow and since bottle calves have been selling cheep, he asked if we'd want a few. Dh was kind enough to call and ask me as dd and I will need to be feeding them a couple times a day while he is at work. We said sure (not so sure this was a good idea, :), and so we'll find out tomorrow evening whether or not we will have some new babies around the farmyard. Since we will need to bottle/bucket feed the little ones for up to 7-8 weeks, I know it will be getting pretty cold while we are out working with them. This scarf might not be my favorite color, but I'm sure the cows won't mind:) and it'll help keep me warm anyway!!

If we get those calves, I'll be sure to post pics of them. They sure are cute when they are little:)

Next week's crafty project will be a new project. I need to do a few crafts to add to a gift basket that our 4-H group will put together to auction off at our carnival at the end of the month. The money goes toward our county 4-H projects. The carnival is lots of fun, but a lot of work, so I'm trying to get things done as quick as I can. We got the 'Autumn Theme' basket to put together, so that should be really easy to come up with a couple projects for things to add to the basket:)

Back to blogging?

It's been a long time!! I tend to turn into an introvert during the summer. All the school-year activities blessedly come to an end and I just want to hide for a while:) I don't even get much stitching done during the summer. Anyway, we are now a month and a half back into the school year and the activities are in full swing and I'm ready for the winter break already!!! :)

So with all the other business around here, I thought I'd give blogging a try again and we'll see how it goes. A little update about our lives...

-Garden flopped this year. I'm not real good about taking care of it anyway, and with the lack of rain this year and the extreem heat, not much got done with it. In fact we haven't even pulled it out yet. It's still just a enormous weed patch:)

-DD started 7th grade this year and we can both feel the effects of a longer and a little harder school day!!!

-I volunteered for more than I think I can handle this year, LOL!! :) I am now the community leader for dd's 4-H club and also volunteered to help with the Secret Sister group that her home school group does. It's fun though and I think if I can just get through the next month with 4-H then then amount of work for it will lessen too.

-Cats, cats and more cats!!! We had several more batches of kittens born this summer, sadly not all of them lived. However one batch, whos momma ran off when they were about 3 weeks old, did make it and they are our favorites. They really think I'm their momma:) They are around 4 months old now, so are taking care of themselves, but come running to me when I'm outside and will play around my feet (and try climbing my legs, which is fine if I'm wearing jeans, not so much when I have a skirt on!!!). Here is a pic of most of them, though my babies aren't in this one (they hadn't been let out of the barn yet).

Hoping to put up some pics of the little bit of stitching that I did get to in the next day or two. Maybe someone still reads here? :)

Animal Babies

We finally got the last of our animal babies for this spring!!! The only other animal we might get are calves, but it isn't looking promising right now. The cattle market is crazy high right now, and it just doesn't make any sence to raise up our own when we can buy grass fed beef for about $3.00lb. Usually we can do our own for less, but not sure about that right now.

These girls are for my dd's 4-H project. The two on the outside are Kikos while the middle one is a Boar goat. All are in the meat goat class. Sadly the middle one died last week. We only had it a little less than two weeks and the last couple days we noticed that she wasn't eating as much and was laying down more than the others. She had a little bit of a clear runny nose, but they all did in the morning, and that was all that I could tell that was wrong. Until her last day, when her nose looked gunky and she had a bit of a cough. So I called the vet who wanted me to bring her in, but the trip did her in and by the time we got there, she had died. The vet said it was fast acting pneumonia.

Dd was really upset, but that is part of raising animals, so we just go on. We started watching the other two really carefully and sure enough, they had it too. So they both got shots (actually I've given them both two shot now, and they seem a lot better, so hopefully we have this beat). I really hate giving animals shots!!! I've had to do it with sheep (we had a long time ago), calves and now goats. But the goats are the worst because they cry and scream!!! Makes me feel horrible, but I know they need it, so I guess I have to do it.These little ones are Rhode Island Reds and we have a mixture of male and female. Around 25 in all. I was only going to buy female this year, but then made the mistake of reading about how chicken that you buy at the store are usually raised and slaughtered (though I know there are exeptions) and well, now we are planning to send some of the males off to be slaughtered locally so we can have chicken meat in the freezer:) We'll keep a couple of the males so that we can raise more babies later on.

And these are the first born of the spring kittens. They are 6 weeks old today!!! They were born in the barn wall, but we got them out a couple weeks ago and put them in this box. Momma is still kinda taking care of them, so we started feeding them just a little and giving them water. However, they are already starting to excape the box, so hopefully momma will keep an eye out for them so they don't get lost:) Yes, one of them has a yucky eye that just won't get better. Another one had a yucky eye too, but it cleared up. I may have to call the vet to see about some eye drops if it doesn't clear up soon. UPDATE: They are now out of the box and thankfully their momma is watching over them:)

And this batch was just born on Monday. I really didn't think this momma would take care of them at all as this is her first batch, she was hand raised (her momma disapeared when she was 2 weeks old), and she is under a year old. We haven't had good luck with the really young mommas, but she hasn't hardly left these kitten alone and is being a really good momma!!! And I'm so happy too, because so many of our cats are gray and white, but she has one down in that pile that is almost all orange with just a bit of white:)

There was one more batch of kittens, but they didn't make it. This was that momma's 2nd batch and she hasn't been interested in taking care of them yet. She's kind of a runty cat, so I'm wondering if that isn't the problem. She did start out pretty good as she at least birthed them all in one place this time, but then didn't feed them for more than a day or two. We usually try to keep them alive (though other than the 3 that were two weeks old we've never been able to get them to live). This batch was in part of the barn wall that we couldn't get to though, so sadly they all died (which they probably would have anyway, but we like to at least try).

Well, I think that is all of the new animal news around here for a while. They are all sure cute, but going to keep us a bit busy!!!

I hope to have a small spring-time stitchy finish to show off by the end of this weekend, so I'll update with some pics then:) And we are hoping to get most of the garden in this weekend, so I may have a few pics of that too. Busy, busy around here!! :)

Animal update

Thought I would give an update on our animals around here:) Here is the only kitten that survived the first round of kitty litters (round #2 is soon to come). We had 4 born (2 different momma cats) but one momma wouldn't take care of her's so we didn't get very many this spring. My dd brought this one inside to me as I was cleaning out this table, so I stuck him in there and he really seemed to like it:) We gave him this 'seal' toy which he really likes, you have to keep your fingers back or he'll get them too:)
Here is a couple pics of our boys. I'm not sure how this happened, but a couple weeks ago my dd was playing outside and called us out to see this. Seems like he was playing with the bucket and got it stuck on his head, LOL. Took my dh a while before the bull calf let him get close enough to pull it off it's head:) It was pretty funny as the calf was rubbing the bucket all over the ground trying to get it off:) The other guys didn't seemed bothered by it at all. hehehe

We also got rid of our chickens. It was kind of sad as we really liked having them here, but they were pulling up our garden and as they kept eating things they shouldn't, we weren't eating their eggs anymore either (we gave the eggs to the cats). Next time we will pen them in, hopefully 'chicken tractor' style so they can still eat naturally but not be so 'free' ranged. This will help us to know where the eggs are too, instead of having a year long easter egg hunt:)

Next week I hope to post an update to our garden. Since dh is doing a good deal of it this year, it is weed free enough to post pics:)

Updated pics

Finally getting around to putting up the pics from the last post:) Here are a couple pieces I've been working on. I love the bird, though I did change several of the colors to ones I liked better.

This one was done as a Christmas ornament exchange. I think this is the first ornie that I've finished and I like how it turned out. If it hadn't been such a pain in the hiney to stitch (it was stitched on 32 ct, over one) I might think about making another for me:)

Here is a pic of my crocheting basket. Just various beginner projects, none of which I have finished.

This is the colonial style dress I made as a play dress/costume for dd. It is a little wrinkly here and it turned out too big on her, but it is cute and worked for her 'enrichment' class dress up day. This was quite a project for me as I hadn't made more than a skirt since high school (and then I had a teacher to tell me what the pattern meant:) Other than the zipper (which I could go back and fix, but won't) it turned out pretty good.

Lastly, this is one of our new cows. We have four, but I couldn't get them all to pose for a picture at one time:) This one was the closest and the best picture. They all have slightly different markings, but are pretty much the same. This one is named 'Spot' (for the spot on his rump). There is another that has a spot on his rump too, but has a black face and there-fore is named 'Black Face'. Another has a pure black back and is named (wait for it, we are so cleaver with naming cows;), 'Black Back'. And the last is named 'T-Bone', first because we are mean and second, because he has a big white 'T' mark on his back. We only name them because we need a way to tell them apart when they are little and get sick (that way we know which ones to watch and which ones need meds). We don't have enough to go to the trouble of tagging yet, so for now naming them will work:)

Nothing much new going on around here other than getting ready for Christmas. I am actually going to get Christmas cards sent out this year and got new pics of dd too:) I am also stitching some ornies for gifts and something for dd too, though she doesn't know about that yet.

Hope everyone is staying warm (we AREN'T!!!) and having a good holiday season:)

Wet!!!

We got a little rain a couple of days ago:) We really needed the rain but it seems like we either get nothing, or a LOT. We got a little over 3 inches and this is what it does to our place...
The above picture is of our river, I mean drive way. This isn't as bad as we've had it, but it's pretty close. All the water from the farmer's fields to the south and west of us (and maybe a river to the south of us, but we think it's too far away to be where this is coming from) flows through our place on its way to a river to the north of us. We know it's connected to a river somewhere because we get fish and crayfish left over after the flooding.

This pic is of our front pasture just to the north of the drive way (which is also still in the pic). About 2 acres of fast flowing 'lake'. Below you can see that at least the duck is happy about our new landscape:)

Yep, that's one happy duck!!!

Our drive way is now fairly dry with just a couple puddles left and the front pasture is mostly just extremely muddy, though some water is still flowing through. I actually like having the flooding (our house is safe, so I don't have to worry about that), because we have ducks (other than ours) and other water birds come to visit. And dd loves to look for the fish and crayfish and whatever else she can find in the water. She just wears her mud boots and stomps around in the water. We make her wear the mud boots because we don't know what is running off the fields (and we don't let her in the water at all if the fields have been sprayed within a couple days before the flooding).

I still need to post about some sewing and stitching I have been working on. As soon as I get that small quilt done and the small stitching project I am working on done, I'll post those:)

Progress

I think I've decided that, like gardening, I am horrible at blogging:) I have gotten some things out of my garden this year, which is an improvement over last year, but it is still very over grown with weeds (which is why you won't get a picture of the garden, hehehe). Here is a picture of the tomatoes and some volunteer sunflowers I picked yesterday. It is great that the sunflowers take care of themselves (and re-seed themselves) because I think I've proven time and time again that I cannot keep flowers alive!!!
I arranged the sunflowers with some 'wild flowers' I found during my morning walk. I think they turned out nice:) In the back ground of the picture is our dog 'Gracie'. She is a bit spoiled and lazy:)

I also have a new pic of our 'boys'. WOW have they gotten big (at least for Jersey bulls) and mean (normal for Jersey bulls). We are just about ready to send them off to be 'processed'. I thought that would be hard on me as when they were little I bottle fed them and petted them. However, the older and bigger and more aggressive they become, the more ready I am to have them gone, hrmm, in the freezer:)

I hope to have some progress pictures on stitching and maybe a small wall quilt to show off next time. I'm trying to get a few things made and ready to start up an Etsy shop. We'll see how much time I have though:)

New life

We'll I think we finally have new kittens for this year. I've posted before how my cats have all been letting their kittens die off, and I think that is still happening, but I finally have a momma cat taking care of a couple of her kittens:) We found several more that hadn't made it, but momma cat did take care of these two. And they are so cute:) I had to move them that first day as she had them under a tractor that was outside and clouds were moving in. I took the kittens and momma cat to the barn and set up a box for them. This way they stay dry and momma is closer to her food and water and can leave the kittens where they'd stay safe.

I never thought I'd say we'd want more kittens after last spring, but it just doesn't seem like summer without new little ones running around. So far these two are it for this year, much improved from the 21 kittens we had born last year!!!

These are much more welcomed out here:) These two hens shared a nest of eggs, and are now sharing the chicks as well. They had 7, but one died. After we moved them to this caged in coop I went to throw out the leftover eggs and noticed one was cheeping. So I kept it in a box with hot water bottles and about 1 1/2 days later, it hatched:) I then gave it a couple days and put it in with the hens and other chicks and they all took to eachother.

This was another hen that was sitting as well. I didn't know what to expect from her as I didn't know how old the eggs she was sitting on was (our hens are REALLY free range and I don't always know where they are laying at). I noticed the hen making some noises this morning and so I checked and sure enough, there were little heads peeking out. I counted 3 or 4 before asking dh if he thought we should leave her be for another day or two, or go ahead and move them today. He said to let her sit for a little longer to make sure they are all hatched this time;) I decided to pick her up to see how many she had and I counted 10 heads!!! After I took this picture I went over to the nest and another one was hatching so she's really going to have her feathers full;)

It is so great to have new life all around us:) I love watching the chicks learn to peck the ground and flutter around. And who doesn't love a little kitten (hmmm, don't ask my dh - who is sick and tired of having cats around;0).