Chickens!

My husband things I'm crazy, but we got an incubator and chicken eggs from a friend and went through the process of hatching some chickens with the kids. It was really a fun experience. The kids loved it, and there were times when Daniel would say, "Are you doing this for the kids or you?" It probably was a mixture of both! My mother did this with my siblings and I a couple of times, and it was always fun and exciting.

Here are our 10 chicken eggs, fresh from Ruthy's Farm!

The first chicken hatched around 4am. I awoke to it's chirping noises and found it already out of it's shell.

Here is our first chicken, Ginger, proudly named by Taylin.

When I woke up from the first chicken, we found the second one in progress of hatching.

Here is chicken #2, Goldie, proudly named by Rayna. Rayna and Tobyn actually got to watch Goldie be hatched. I happened to be in the shower and Taylin was getting dress, but Rayna and Tobyn had decided to just plant themselves that morning and just watch the chickens.

All the kids were enthralled with the new baby chicks. It's really an amazing process. I think it just shows God's hand in creation. They start out as a simple egg, and when you look inside you see a tiny spec developing, and 21 days later you have this perfectly formed baby chicken! Out of our 10 eggs we had only 2 of them hatch. Not the greatest odds, but I've heard that is fairly common.

Here they are after they have dried out. We had plans to keep the chickens for a while and then give them back to our friend who has the farm, but it didn't turn out quite that way. We kept them for about a month, which apparently was too long. They both ended up dying with in two days of each other and we don't really know why. It was actually very sad, although I think I took it the hardest! One minute they were trying to escape there box, and the next they were gone.

Taylin actually snapped this photo two days before Goldie passed away. We miss you chickens! It was fun!