Hatching Day!

We started hatching chickens naturally late last year and I loved the whole experience. It's fun choosing which eggs to hatch; anticipating the hatching day (21 days from incubation); watching the mama hens interact with her chicks; and letting the mama hens do all the work of raising the chicks instead of us.

Early this year I was itching to have a hen go broody so that we could have chicks. There were a couple of false starts and the Backyard Chickens (BYC) site had a planned hatch-a-long for Easter, which only made me more anxious to get some chicks around here. We didn't get any for Easter, but our olive-egger hen did go broody right before that so I was happy.

The adage of "be careful of what you wish for" is so true in this case. Since that time, we have constantly had one or more broody hens. Currently, we have four broodies. Here's the three broodies in our EGGS coop:

The eggs under the hen on the left are now hatching. Here's a couple of the chicks...

Goldie is a good name for this one, don't you think?

How cute is this tiny Muffin?!? She fell asleep in my hand.

There's several more chicks so stay tuned for more cuteness overload!