The chickens are soooo big!

We are now down to 6 chickens(by choice) We gave away all of our roosters and some hens. We only wanted to keep about 4-6 chickens in our flock so this is perfect. They love their coop and pen and love table scraps!! I hope we get some eggs soon! It is so fun having chickens, everyone in the neighborhood comes over to seem them like we have a farm.

I need to take pictures of each chicken now, they are huge! We have

Thelma(black silkie)

Louise or lovelove as hannah renamed her because she is so sweet(white silkie)

Lucy(buff orphington)

Charlotte(buff orphington)

Scarlet(barred rock)

Betsy(barred rock)

so thats our flock! they are so cute and friendly and come running now to the pen door to see if we have treats for them. I love when we open the coop door in the morning and then run out in a circle very fast!

I will try to post pictures soon!

Jess

Slacking with blogging

Sorry I haven't written in so long, we have been busy!! The chicken pen and coop are almost done and the chickens are almost ready to be outside with these warm temps! Thank god because they are huge and have out grown being in the house! We also still have 16 which was fine when they were chicks but now that they are chickens , they are being evicted! As of right now the ones we are sure are males are going to my neighbor who really has a farm with horses and tons of chickens! Then once we can tell who is a male and who is a female of the remaining we will dwindle our flock down to 5-6! I honestly can't wait to decide who we are keeping so we can officially name them! the silkies are the only ones with names because we can tell them apart-Thelma(the black silkie) and louise(the white one).

I promise some new pictures by this weekend!!

Jess

ps I added some dishes to my master recipe list!!

check them out!

From chicks to chickens!

Our chicks are HUGE!!! I need to take some new pictures tonight . They have tons of feathers already and are so cute and friendly now. If I put my hand down they all jump in it, so cute. We still have the little silkies also which are sooooo small compared to the other chicks but they hold their own. I plan to give them some treats this week and see how they do, but so far so good raising chickens!!

I can't wait till they start laying some yummy eggs now!

Hopefully I can post some pictures tonight or tomorrow

Jess

Thelma and Louise(I hope)

Today I picked up two little baby silkie chicks from a really nice women in Commack. She had an awesome pen full of silkies and I am obsessed! I named these two little girls Thelma and louise and I hope they are both girls!!!

Other names of our chicks once we can tell them apart-

Lucy

Charlotte

Scarlet

Betsy(maybe)

anyone have any good chicken names?

I will post pictures of Thelma and Louise tomorrow!!

Jess

14 chicks and more picture

The 14th chick was born this afternoon and its still as exciting as the first!!. Now We have 11 chicks in the brooder and 3 babies in the incubator drying off! We have one more silkie egg in the incubator which I don't think will hatch...anyways enough of me talking here are some cute pictures

We are up to 13 chicks!!

All the chicks are doing well in their brooder. We have been playing with them and loving on them like crazy! They are all so cute and funny. I decided to take most of them out of the incubator yesterday since they were messing with the baby chicks that were just hatching. Right now in the incubator we have two baby chicks that hatched last night and two more eggs. One of the eggs are hatching, the other is not but you never know!! I will leave the last egg in until day 25. I still can't believe we got this much to hatch, I guess all of our stressing paid off!

Sorry the pictures aren't the best quality but they are all camera phone pictures, I haven't uploaded them off my camera yet but I promise I will tonight!!

Okay, I'm off to play with the baby chicks all day!!!

Jess

THIS HAS BEEN AN EXCITING WEEKEND!!!

We officially have 11 chicks out of 15 chicks out of their shells!!!! Yesterday late afternoon the first one hatched and we were there to see it. Amazing is the only was I can describe it :) We have a video that when things calm down a bit I will upload and tons of pictures!! The ones I am uploading now are from my camera phone but we took better ones also! This first picture is the first "pip" we saw and we could actually see the chick chirping and moving in the shell. This is all so cool. After it hatched I truly did not believe any of the others would hatch I was thinking we got lucky and should be happy to even have one. Well I woke up this morning and their were 11!!!!

The only bad part is the stronger chicks that hatched earlier are pecking at the newly born chicks so they have no time to get their footing and relax after being born :(

After being scared for my life on Wed due to a pulmonary embolism in my lungs and test after test this all makes my horrible week amazing!!!

THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING I HAVE DONE IN MY LIFE!!!!

I will update with pictures of the chicks once they can be taken out of the incubator and videos!!!!

again if anyone wants to come see the babies feel free :) :)

Jess

They are hatching!

Lock down haha

Well tonight we officially go into "lockdown" LOL.. Lockdown is a term that chicken people use for the final day you can open the incubator to add water or candle the eggs. You also remove the egg turner and stop turing the eggs so they can get into position to hatch!!! I guess since I am using the lockdown term I am officially a chicken person lol..

Tonight I will fill the water basins to up the humidity, remove the egg turner and sit on my hands and wait till we see the first pip!! I can't wait and I am praying we have baby chicks by this weekend!!!! I plan to stalk the incubator all weekend besides a baby shower I have to go to on sat.

I have been extremely sick all week with flu like symptoms and 3 large lymph nodes which are enlarged in the back of my head. I plan to go to the Dr. today to have them checked out being that I am a nurse and a hypochondriac I always think the worse :( I am just glad I got sick this week and can enjoy the chicks this weekend since I feel much better today.

Master recipe list

These are all the recipes I've ever made, new and old. Most are old family recipes that I have been cooking since a young age

Chicken Scallopine

Chicken/ Veal parmesan over pasta

Chicken/Veal piccata over pasta

Chicken/Veal frances over pasta

Chicken & sun-dried tomatoes over pasta in a white wine sauce

Creamy chicken casserole

Veal and scallions over pasta in a lemon sauce

Linguine and clam sauce

Baked macaroni and cheese

Tacos- Beef, chicken, turkey or shrimp & avocado with all the fixings

shepards pie

chicken pot pie

Tamale Pie with avocados

Panko breaded tilapia with butternut squash

pan seared fish with rice and cherry tomatoes

homemade red shrimp sauce over linguine

shrimp scampi and garlic bread

fettucini alfredo

Shrimp fettucini alfredo

Penne ala vodka

Herb filet mignon roast

Montreal mix filet mignon

asparagus wrapped in prosciutto

parmesan baked asparagus

chicken cutlets mashed potatoes and peas

Onion pot roast

Pot roast and swiss hot sandwiches with left over pot roast meat

Chili

Corn casserole

Beef stew

Slow cooker beef Bourguignon

Sicilian Rice Ball Casserole

orecchiette with chicken meatballs

Cilantro Lime Shrimp

Mushroom and swiss sliders

Slow cooker pulled buffalo chicken sandwiches and homemade mac and cheese

Pan seared onion pierogies and potato pancakes

Pasta Carbonara

Spaghetti and meatballs

Meatloaf

spaghetti squash with shrimp tomatoes and spinach- served in shells

lasagna rolls

stuffed mushrooms

Pumpkin ravioli in a browned butter sage sauce

Make-Ahead Muffin Melts

Beef and bean burritos

Angel hair with shrimp tomatoes and basil

Chili dip

clam dip

taco dip

buffalo chicken dip

panzanella salad

Chicken soup with tortellini

Pasta with peas and prosciutto

lemon greek potatoes

Veal stew

Pasta Norma

Browned butter lobster risotto

Rack of lamb

fried artichoke hearts

Zucchini casserole

Veal Saltimbocca

orzo salad

cold pasta salad

roasted breadcrumb asparagus

roasted tomatoes

flounder and cavatelli puttanesca

Lemon Chicken and Orzo Soup

Pan seared sea scallops

baked ziti with mushroom and spinich

Okay thats all I can think of for now but as I think of things or make new recipes I will definitely update!

Just a small vent and then some other stuff also

I find it funny how a person that HATES me and is horribly mean to me would ask for one of MY baby chicks. It is crazy to me. Why would I give a hateful mean person a little fuzzy snugly baby chick :)

Sorry if I sound upset in this post but I am. I don't understand how someone could try to ruin this experience when in reality ,if they were nice I would be nice and invite them to be a part of it also!!

okay just needed to get that out...

The eggs(or should I be calling them chicks now since they are fully developed?) are doing well. We should have little snuggle fuzzy butts this weekend!! I can't wait to watch them hatch. This has been such an amazing experience probably one of the best in my life. I have learned so much from this and I hope everyone that is involved in the process has also(I wont name names because apparently to one person its not okay ). I plan to make a video of the chicks hatching and then of course tons of pictures of the babies!! If all goes well we will have 15 baby chicks by this weekend. If anyone wants to come see them let me know, its not every day you get to see a baby chick hatching :)

This whole week needs to go super fast! I still need to go pick up bedding for the brooder(what baby chicks stay in until they can go in the coop)a wire screen so they can't jump out, and a heat lamp. Everything else I pretty much already have for them.

Non chicken related- I want to start making a master list of meals that I cook so when I can't decide what I want to cook one night I can just look at my list. I guess I will just post it here since I don't have a cooking blog also. I would also like to get a picture of each meal, I think that would be cool :) I'll start it now and add to it as I think of new things!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend

Jess

Couldn't resist...had to candle!!!

Well even though everyone said not to I HAD to candle the eggs when I added water to the incubator. After our mishap I could cry knowing that we did not kill them!! Out of 30 eggs total we decided that 15 eggs are moving around and growing!! Being that I am a nurse and a science freak we decided to crack open the 15 eggs that had no sign of life! Two out of those 15 eggs had a small little embryo growing in it but probably stopped growing at day 5 ,I decided this from looking at pictures. The other eggs that we opened were either not fertile or got messed up in shipping so they never grew. So I am happy with 15 eggs right now and if about half of those hatch we should end up with about 7-8 chicks!!

I tried to take some pictures of the chicks in the eggs but it was so hard for them to come out clear. I will defiantly be posting pictures as soon as we have progress with the chicks hatching though!

I am so excited!!!

Jess

Good news and bad news

On friday 2/25/11 I decided to candle the eggs because it was day 7. I saw veins and I saw something in the egg moving around which I THINK was the chick. It was amazing and we were so excited!!!. I went away for the weekend, came back and the eggs were fine. I went to bed last night and it was 99.6 with 41% humidity. This morning I woke up and the wire must have gotten messed up because it was 76.5 degrees and 75% humidity!!! I am so worried we killed the baby chicks :( I got the temp back up and the humidity down right away but my guess is they were like that for about about 9 hours as the temperature was dropping :( I could kick myself because we were doing so well!!

Now only time will tell. I guess I will candle again on day 18 before lockdown and see what is going on. The next 8 days are doing to be torture not touching the eggs!!

On another note I went to great escaped water park this weekend and it was an amazing time!! For anyone in New York you should check it out!

I need to figure out what I'm making this week and go shopping tonight. Being away for the weekend always gets me screwed up...

I'll have to think about what I feel like making and make a new blog post

Jess

Quick update!!

We candled yesterday and most of the eggs had veins!!!!! I am so excited

Next time I will try to get some pictures

Jess

So far so good

The eggs are looking good so far. Temperature and humidity levels have been pretty consistent.

I can candle the eggs on friday to see if they are developing. We should be able to see veins in the eggs by Friday, if we don't we will be very disappointed and will probably know we need to order some baby chicks.

This is what the eggs should look like around day 5-7 when candled. It is harder to see in brown eggs so we may or may not be able to see this. This is a picture I took off the internet, but I hope to post my own pictures if I can get some good ones.

I am trying to do anything else to keep myself busy and stop obsessing over the eggs. Thankfully I have been working a lot this week! (Which is great for all the chicken stuff I want to buy and for the fact that if I sit home I will just stare at the eggs) I still need to plan my meals this week which I usually do on Sunday's but my week is all thrown off due to working all weekend.

Last weeks meals were-

Monday

pasta and clams, garlic bread

Tuesday

Went out with a friend and we had stuff from my dads store at her house

Wednesday

Tacos bake, sweet plantains and avocados

Thursday

Pasta Carbonara which was a new recipe and amazing

Friday

Worked- hospital food yuck

Sat

• Worked- hospital food yuck

sunday

Medieval times!! so fun and yummy food

This week

Monday 2/21

Penne ala vodka with chicken

Tuesday 2/22

Slow Cooker Beef Bourguignon and mashed potatoes

Wednesday 2/23

Chicken cutlets, left over mashed potatoes and cheesy broccoli

Thursday 2/24

slow cooker buffalo sandwiches

Mac and cheese

Friday 2/25

grouper over rice pilaf and roasted cherry tomatoes

Sat 2/26

have plans

Sunday 2/27

have plans

After work today I need to clip my coupons and go food shopping! Oh and obsess over my eggs and check their temperature 575893479687368 times :)

Jess

We are all ready to go

The eggs are officially in the incubator and the incubator is officially on!

We have

10 Barred rocks-which I don't think we will have great success with the hatch rate since we had these waiting the longest to go in the incubator

6 Buff Orphingtons

12 Silkies

so since all didn't go to plan with getting them into the incubator on Wed our new dates are

Temps right now are 99.3 which will hopefully rise a bit by tomorrow

Humidity is 45%

Add water for last time at day 18- March 8th

Remove egg turner at day 18- March 8th

Eggs should hatch between day 19 and 25- March 9th-March 15th

I am really praying we get some to hatch!

I plan to candle the eggs at day 7 to see if any are growing, so check back around the 25th for that update and I am sure I will make some small updates until then.

Jess

sorry

I haven't posted anything in a while. I had a sad week so nothing fun to update about. The rest of the eggs will hopefully be here tomorrow so we can get started.

Jess

First batch of eggs came!! On a sunday?

First batch of eggs came today!! I don't understand how the post office delivered them on a Sunday but it was a guy in a SUV who brought them...so weird. Anyways they are here!! Yay

Jess

For my own reference

If all goes well and eggs go in on wed follow these dates-

Temps should be between 99.5-100.5

Humidity should be between 35% and 45%, and higher during hatching.

Fill water twice a week-16th, 19th, 21st, 25th, 28th, 5th

Don't open incubator after day 18- March 5th

Add water for last time at day 18- March 5th

Remove egg turner at day 18- March 5th

Eggs should hatch between day 19 and 25- March 6th-March 12th

The incubator came today!!

YAY! I started it up to make sure it worked and so far so good!! The eggs should be here monday and we should be good to go by Wednesday!! Then the torture of waiting for the eggs to hatch will begin!!!

Jess

Stalking the mail and planning meals

The incubator and eggs are supposed to arrive monday. I will set up the incubator to let it get acclimated for 24 hours while the eggs "set" for 24 hours. I read that you are supposed to do this with shipped fertile eggs since they get a little messed up in shipping. So that means by Wed the latest they will be in the incubator. This mean the Chicks should be here the week of March 6th sometime. They better not hatch late because March 12th I have a baby shower to go to and I don't want to miss it. I really hope I am not at work while they hatch! I want to take vacation but its silly to take off for that.

On another note, does anyone meal plan? I love to plan all the dinners I am having for the week, make a list and then search for coupons. Then I food shop weekly. I save a ton of money like this and always have what I want to make at home. A few of my friends do this and we post them in emails to each other. It really helps come up with new ideas and new recipes instead of always making the same things. I think I'll start posting my meal plans and if you are interested in a recipe feel free to ask me for it! Maybe I'll even take a picture of my final dinner every night and post it the following week!

Last week and this week of my meal planning

Sunday 1/30/11

Angel hair with shrimp tomatoes and basil

Monday 1/31/11

Tilapia and butternut squash

Tuesday 2/1/11

Hot buffalo chicken sandwiches

Wednesday 2/2/11

Slow cooker pot roast

mac and cheese

Thursday 2/3/11

Pot roast and swiss hot sandwiches with left over pot roast meat

Mac and cheese left over

Friday 2/4/11

Chicken cutlets/ steak Mashed potatoes

Saturday 2/5/11

Left overs?

Sunday 2/6/11

Chicken sundried

tomatoes and pasta

Monday 2/7/11

Left overs from sunday

Tuesday 2/8/11

Shepherd's pie

Wednesday 2/9/11

Spaghetti squash with shrimp tomatoes and spinach

Thursday 2/7/11

Out to dinner with friends

Friday 2/8/11

Scallops with mushrooms over rice

Saturday 2/9/11

Tamale Pie, sweet plantains and sliced avocados

Sunday 2/10/11

Linguine with clam sauce and garlic bread

Jess

BREAKING NEWS!!!

HAHA I am taking this chicken thing a little serious!! If I am this excited about ordering a chicken coop can you imagine how excited I will be when our eggs hatch!

The chicken coop has been ordered and will be here in about 1 week! It hold 3-5 hens which is perfect since we can only keep 6 and only plan to have 4! It has a covered run so the chickens can stay safe and then we plan to put chicken wire all around that to make a larger pen for them to be free range! I think we are going to paint it red and white like a barn.

Here is the coop!


Jess

Hot dog Hot dog Hot diggity dog

The next member of the farm is Isabella(Izzy).
Izzy at 8 weeks













Izzy now, isnt she so pretty!!












She is a 4 year old(almost 5 in april) dachshund. I have had her since she was 8 weeks old and she is such a good dog. I think she looks like a sea otter and I tell her so daily. She is the laziest dog I have ever met and probably sleeps on average about 23 hours a day. The other 1 hour a day she enjoys eating, playing with her toys and bunny hunting! She is very smart and understands english, well I think she does! In the summer Izzy also enjoys swimming in the pool, this is when she is in her true sea otter state. Look at this cute video of her!



After seeing that try to tell me she does not look like a sea otter!!!

Next puppy update will be about Penelope the chihuahua. Hannah I might need your help with that one since you have known Penelope a LONG time :)

Jess

One of the other pets on "the farm"

Between my friend and I we have 4 dogs so even though we don't have chickens yet I feel like we already have a farm when they all get together!! The next couple of days until we get the eggs I will make a blog about each dog so you can meet the other members of the farm!

The youngest is the cutest Pomeranian I have ever seen. She is Hannah's baby!! She has the sweetest, and most fun personality I have ever seen.

Meet Rosie
This is her as a baby remember when she was this little Hannah?!?!?


This is her now at 8 months sporting her lion hair cut. If we ever cut her hair cut again we might be in trouble with Hannah because she HATED it. She likes her as a little fluff ball, as do I!


Cute things that Rosie does:

1. we love how she walks and prances when she is playing
2. She digs in her water bowl splashing all the water out, it is annoying but SO CUTE!
3. Put her toys in her food as if she wants to feed them
4. Plays with Opal ,besides Hannah Opal is her second BFF
5. Digs on pillows and blankets

Hannah what else do you love about Rosie? I love EVERYTHING so its so hard to pick a few of my favorites!

Next puppy up will be Isabella(Izzy)

Jess

Not about chickens, but here are some recipes

• I am getting so anxious waiting for our eggs! It seems like this is going to be a lot of hurrying up and waiting. So while we are waiting I will share with you some of my FAVORITE crock pot recipes. I love to cook but sometimes you just want to throw everything in one pot ,come home and dinner is ready for you!
• 
  
• 
  
• slow cooker buffalo sandwiches
• 
  
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• 1 (17.5 fluid ounce) bottle buffalo wing sauce, divided
• 1/2 (1 ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 6 rolls
• Place the chicken breasts into a slow cooker, and pour in 3/4 of the wing sauce and the ranch dressing mix. Cover, and cook on Low for 6 to 7 hours. Once the chicken has cooked, add the butter, and shred the meat finely with two forks. Pile the meat onto the rolls, and splash with the remaining buffalo wing sauce to serve.

I also like to mix a bit of blue cheese, sour cream and scallions to dress the roll with and some celery cut up on the side!!

Pot Roast- I usually serve with mashed potatoes because it makes an amazing gravy

Ingredients

* 2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of mushroom soup
* 1 (1 ounce) package dry onion soup mix
* 1 1/4 cups water
* 5 1/2 pounds pot roast

Directions

1. In a slow cooker, mix cream of mushroom soup, dry onion soup mix and water. Place pot roast in slow cooker and coat with soup mixture.
2. Cook on High setting for 3 to 4 hours, or on Low setting for 8 to 9 hours.

I try to cook almost every night so I have a TON of recipes. Most are family recipes which I know are awesome but lately I have been trying new things, some good, some bad and some horrible. At least I cook though !

How many days till chicken eggs? I think the countdown is 4 days!! woo hoo, Okay bed time for me!

Jess

How cute are these?- Silkies

How cute, adorable and funny looking are these chickens? I LOVE them. I just read all about them and they seem like they would do okay in our NY weather and seem to have great personalities. I want to order some of these also. Am I crazy? In the town on brook haven you can only have 6 hens. I think we only want a small flock of 4 but it would be so cute to have one of these! So far we have 16 eggs being shipped to us but from what everyone is telling me most of them will not hatch and probably half will be roosters that we can't keep. I hope we get at least some to hatch! Okay so I have officially gotten nothing done today, between looking up some new recipes(which Ill post later) and researching chickens I'm officially a slacker.

Jess

Chicken obsessed

The tile says its all. We have officially become chicken obsessed over here. Its all I can think about, I am so excited!!! We talk about the coop, supplies, types of chicks, and how to care for them about 24/7 now. Unfortunately due to bad weather conditions going on where we are getting the eggs from ,the eggs now will not ship till monday so hopefully we can have them in the incubator and ready to go by thursday.

Once the Baby chicks are born they will stay in the incubator for up to 24 hours so they can fully dry off. Then we will move them to a tupperware box with a heat lamp on it to keep them warm. This will be the fun part, the hard part is just staring at the eggs everyday hoping and wondering if they will hatch.

I will post more once we get them!!

Hannah are you getting excited?!??!? I am!

Jess

First Post- A little about me!

I am starting this blog to document raising chickens in my NY home along with my friend. We are so excited to get started! Some people choose to buy their chickens as chicks, but we have decided to try to raise them from eggs. I am nervous they will not hatch but we will be very excited if they do. I plan to do an update every few days for the first year of the chickens lives, even if it is a boring update. I hope this is an amazing learning experience for us and anyone who reads! Feel free to comment with any advice and suggestions for us!

We live in NY so we needed to take into account the type of chicken that we could keep. I have been told by my chicken expert friend( Thanks Kelly) that the best breeds that would suit us are-

Buff Orpingtons
Black Australorps
Barred Rocks
Ameracanas or Arucanas
Rhode Island Reds

We decided on Buff Orpingtons and Barred Rocks after some research

Here are Buff Orpingtons as Baby chicks...SO CUTE!

and then as Adults I think they are beautiful!

Here are the Barred Rocks as babies!! so cute!!

and as adults, I love the coloring

My friend believes its a bad idea to name the Chicks before they are born because it will jinx us but here are some names I like :)

Charlotte

Scarlet

Betsy

Gwendolyn

So far the supplies we have bought are-

Hova Bator Preset Genesis 1588 Incubator

I have done a ton of research on it and I think this is our best chance at getting our eggs to hatch. It also has a automatic egg turner to reduce us handling the eggs.

I also bought a candling kit so we can check the progress of the chicks!

Hopefully we will receive the chicks by friday and I will do another update then, I am praying they make it to us safe!!

Jess


P.S My friend has two adorable children who are also so excited for the chicks to be born. One of the reason my friend wanted to do this was for the amazing experience Hannah and Ben are going to take away from it. I am sure they are going to be VERY involved in this process and will LOVE it!!
HI HANNAH!! I hope you love doing this, start thinking of names for our chickens!