No, not the four legged ones. We are officially all sold out of baby goats. I mean the two legged ones. Baby chicks! Let me back up a bit. Our 15 chickens are over three years old. That means their egg production is decreasing.  We needed to start thinking about what to do with our flock of aging birds. (I feel like that last sentence could include me as well.) A friend from church who has an incubator thought we should pool our resources and make some baby chicks. I provided the eggs and she did the rest.

Well, sometimes things just don’t work out.

The incubator was bumped, which threw off the humidity, which then had to be adjusted. My friend ended up with the humidity too high and all the chicks drowned in their shells. So sad.

There are some things I’ve learned about chickens over the last four years. Here is my list:

• When you purchase baby chicks when you already have full grown chickens, they need to be protected from the adult birds.
• As the babies grow, you need to give the adult birds a chance to get to know them all the while keeping them safe
• When you allow a hen to hatch her babies, this is all done by the mom hen. She tucks them under her wings when they are babies, she fights off the other chickens that are aggressive.
• Maybe the most important of my knowledge is that roosters raised by a hen are nice. Roosters not raised by a hen are really MEAN!

When we purchased our first birds we had some that wanted to go broody and we broke that . (Broody birds don’t lay eggs) Now that our birds have provided us with tons of wonderful healthy eggs I wondered if I could get our hens to hatch some babies.

NOPE

Now I needed to make some choices. Do we butcher the full grown chickens and start over? Nope  We just can’t do that to our faithful chickens.

What type of chickens should we purchase? Well if you look at my list of things I’ve learned you could make a very safe bet  that I was on the look out for hens that love being a mom.

Enter Buff Orpingtons.

Here is the description from  “My Pet Chicken”

Orpingtons are big, friendly dual-purpose birds originally developed in the UK. For many small farms and homesteaders, Orpingtons are the only way to go!  They’re cold-hardy due to their fluffy plumage. Wonderful mothers, they do go broody. There is not much more charming than seeing a mother Orpington and her fluffy new baby chicks peeking from beneath her wings in a field of clover on a sunny day. Plus, they’re gentle and friendly on top of being good layers. The Buff Orpington is the most popular of all varieties of Orpington–a pretty, bright, pale “buffed” copper color that is striking as eye candy on a green lawn.

Drumroll please…….

We have 12 precious little cuties.

Here is what they will look like all grown up.

I’ve also heard that they are very friendly and like to be held.

I’ll be photographing their growth.

It is so nice to have babies around again (it’s only been a week since the last of the baby goats left)

I wonder if we could be addicted to babies?

Have a wonderful week. 14 school days left!