Ellie's Chicks

The hunt for corn and soy free eggs for Ellie has pushed us towards our own backyard chicken flock. It is not my dream to have a morning and evening chicken routine, but $10 a dozen is not realistic for the budget. In our best attempts to eliminate the soy and corn influence, I purchased fertile eggs from a nearby farm. After 21 days of anticipation we hatched our own heritage chickens using an incubator and a lot of excitement. Starting with 24 fertile eggs, we were happy to end with 14 baby chicks. In only a matter of days Moriah was naming them, and somehow telling them apart.

Here is a picture of our eggs before hatching:

Since these chickens were so incredibly important for Ellie's nutritional needs, I contemplated sitting on them myself. The result was me up at 3 a.m. as the first chick hatched, and attempting to catch it on my iphone. This is a slow and amazing process! Working hard to get the videos to upload but having trouble with blogger.

It will be several months before these chickens start laying eggs for Ellie. In the meantime I am hunting down information on feeding chickens a grain free diet, and figuring out how to tell the roosters from the hens.