My New Babies

So, remember how I told you we were getting goats?

Meet Rosy, she is our milk goat.  She gives us just about a liter a milking (close to a quart for you Americans!).  She is getting used to her new home so her milk production dropped a bit, but we are slowly growing on her so she is giving us a little more milk each day!  

She is super sweet and loves to have her neck scratched.  She thinks I am her mom and follows me around rubbing up against me for love each time I stop.

This is Ali.  She is pregnant and due to kid around May 17th.  The lady we got our goats from thinks she has twins in there, so we are hoping for two nannies!

I call Ali "Greedy Pig".  She will eat anything that I give her, and eat A LOT of it!  She is crazy curious and is a holy crap escape artist.  Where Rosy is content to be where we tell her to be, Ali will test the boundaries and try to push them to the limit.  She is adorable and I love how naughty she is.  For some reason that makes her more enduring to me.

We took our neighbours to meet the "goat lady" as we call our goat source, and while there the goat lady showed us her new chicks.  She was telling me that she didn't like the Cochin's and was probably going to get rid of them.  She didn't like how the feathers were all over their legs.

I told her I loved the way a Cochin had feathers all the way down and was actually looking for a place to buy them!  So...I inherited 9 little baby chicks!

We were pretty much set up because of this:

Yup, that is right, it is an incubator!

I picked it up a couple weeks ago and was saving eggs for a while.  It takes 41 eggs to fill it, and so between the neighbour and I we filled that baby and turned it on!

My chicks are due on the 20th of April.  One day before my birthday.  I think that makes a pretty darn nice birthday present, don't you?!

We marked each of our eggs, my neighbour has an "X" on each of her eggs so we can tell if both of our roosters are doing their jobs.  If you remember, I actually got the chickens from a friend.  We split his flock in two and each got a roo.  We want to know if our 3 year old roo's are doing their job fertilization wise so this was an easy way to check it out.

I had all the stuff ready for the new little chicks and so we were quite happy to take the Cochin's and test out our ability to raise them till we can put them outside.

By the way, chicks REEK!  They are about the stinkiest thing ever.

I totally understand why you would love it if your chickens go broody.  I am hoping that next year we have a couple that want to raise their babies so I don't have to!

Cheers