If you build it…they will come

Laun finished building the chicken coop & now all we are missing is the birds. We went out to Hereford and bought 6 chickens & the kids are pretty excited. Since we were clear out by Benson all ready, we had to stop by the Apple Farm for dinner. We found this place awhile back & were excited to go again.

The chickens in their coop & Clayton checking out the pheasant eggs he ordered off ebay (without asking Laun first). None of Clayton’s eggs ended up hatching and if he would have waited to ask Laun first before buying them, he would’ve known that the seller got terrible reviews-good lesson learned. What has the world come to…an 8 year old ordering eggs on ebay, crazy. He was pretty proud of those eggs:)

Like father like son-here’s some of the pheasant eggs Laun ordered-love the blue-ish one to the right. Luckily, some of these pheasants ended up hatching.

We have an incubator full of eggs, around 300 eggs that is! And the next photo is of the baby quail who just arrived. I love how the birds are spilling out of the incubator (both photos the incubator door is open).

The kids were so excited to wake up to baby quail cracking out of their speckled eggs.

After the birds hatch, they stay in the incubator for a bit longer & then get put in a tank with a light…I love how they all gather under the light to keep warm.

Some hatch out on their own…

A few actually had to be taken out since they wouldn’t do it on their own (otherwise they would just die)-it looks gross, but it was great for the boys to learn so much…

I love how after they hatch out you can find them everywhere in the incubator, some just sit between the other eggs & some jump to the bottom. The other lighter bird is a chicken.

When they get all dry, they eventually get moved to an outside cage. Laun built another cage for the birds to go in until they are sold. We can’t possibly keep that many birds, so we sell some of them.

Here are some pheasants:

I think that some of the cutest birds are the ducks…

Laun has now sold the bigger coop you see in this picture. He made money off it & can build another one later for free if he wants to.

The big chickens will roam free in our backyard & the kids love to chase & catch them (poor birds). The chicken Marlee is holding is hers & is named Camo, she loves it. It has been sold since then:( She isn’t that broken hearted though, probably because there are still some left.

One of my all time favorite photos, I just wish Clayton was in it, but he was at swim.

The boys get sad to part with some of the birds, but we just can’t keep them all. Here Porter is catching the ducks that are about to be sold & Clayton is holding his favorite duck just one more time.

That is a handful of ducks…

Clayton's favorite-the only brownish duck we had.

These ducks liked to play follow the leader, one goes somewhere & the others followed after.

We have lots of birds coming & going. So far we have hatched chickens (some of those eggs were from my brother Andy’s chickens), quail, pheasants, and ducks. The kids have loved to go in at night with a flash light and candle the eggs, which is to check & see if the eggs are fertile. If their fertile you can see blood veins. It takes the eggs anywhere from 17-29 days to hatch. The kids have learned so much about birds & are always so excited to watch them hatch. Even though they sometimes want to keep all the birds, they also get excited to sell them & make some money. Last time we had birds was when Clayton was very young, so it has been fun to have some again.