Babies are here

 Tonight I will start with the good news. We have babies. We have a teeny, tiny quail. There were more than one, but this is the good news section (I'll save the bad new for the end.) We also have 8 chicks: 2 Blue Copper Marans, 3 Black Copper
Marans, 1 New Hampshire, and 2 Easter Eggers. My broody hen also hatched out 5 chicks and they are happy out in the coop with their Mama.

Teeny, tiny quail

Blue Copper Marans

Black Copper Marans

Easter Eggers, one of whom seems to be Super Chicken

New Hampshire

Mama and 5 babies

 More good news, the garden is doing great. The potato plants are about 14 inches tall, and I will need to hill them up again very soon. The tomato that I put in the herb bed has it's first flower buds. It has done better than I imagined it would. I harvested some lettuce and green onions this week to have a little salad, and it was delicious.

Potatoes

3 different kinds of lettuce and garden cress sprouts

My early tomato plant

Tomato flower buds

 I got some chocolate mint from one of my dearest friends and it has a spot in the herb garden now along with my apple mint and spearmint. I love mint tea, so I'm very happy to have several varieties now.

Spearmint

Chocolate mint

Apple mint

 The bigger chicks are happy out in the chicken tractor in the yard. They get to munch on grass and bugs, it's nice and warm, and they get to watch the big girls scratching all around them. Hopefully, when it's time to integrate, we won't have too many problems. The other animals like to hang out and watch the babies. I try to tell myself that they aren't considering how yummy the little chickens are.

23 chicks, a giant dumb puppy, and a very pregnant kitty cat

 The final bit of good news is that I finally got ALL of my kids out in the bluebonnets for some pictures. I may be biased, but I think my children are remarkably cute.

Yup, really cute kids

Aislyn Rose

Ian Patrick

Lily Emmerline 

Gabriel James

Yellow indian paintbrush 

 Now for the bad news. Bruno is gone. He finally killed too many chickens and Mike said he had to go. I don't disagree but I will miss the big doofus. Boris keeps looking around trying to find his big brother. 

 While I did get some really cute chicks, I was expecting a lot more. There were 55 chicken eggs in the incubator and 47 of them didn't hatch. I think I had thermometer problems and I know that I had a terribly hard time getting the humidity down below 60% for the entire incubation. 

 Then there's the quail...I actually had 3 hatch. The first one got put in a cardboard box on my bedroom floor, and Lily thought the dogs might like to "see" it. I'm not sure which dog actually ate the baby, but they both got in big trouble. The 2nd one drowned in it's water dish. Mind you, I was using a baby food lid for a water dish, it couldn't have been more than a quarter of an inch of water. Quail are even dumber than chickens, and that's saying something.

 That's it for the night, I hope you all have a good week. Blessed Be...