Chicks and Goats

We incubated chicks! The eggs sat on our kitchen counter for almost a month but it was so worth it to see the hatching process. Thankfully my Mom, a chick hatching veteran, came for a visit which we strategically placed around hatching time and she walked me through it.

Two of the seven eggs never did anything (even after sitting in the incubator for four extra days), two started hatching but didn't ever make it out (so hard), so we got to watch three healthy chicks emerge. It was amazing to watch them hatch. Hatching is hard work! I assumed that, but when I actually watched it I better appreciated it. It made me want to deliver another baby. Go figure.

We decided that the first chick would be Adam and the second would be Eve. 

Meet Adam:

And then Eve came along and blew my mind. Not all chicks are yellow. Did anybody else not know that?? She was nice and dark and fluffed up to be beautiful. AND she actually is a girl, so bonus! I learned that when we dropped them off. She was my favorite, we definitely bonded.

The third one out was all black including his legs so I went with Severus. He was also a favorite for obvious reasons.

 

Cameron and I read to the chicks at night and after a couple of days he warmed up to holding one.

Mom did this cute craft with the boys:

And Spencer was hands off:

:-)

When we took the chicks back to the Criswell's we got to see their baby goats!! The boys have been really nervous in the goat pasture before, but they have definitely warmed up. Holding the goats was scary at first too, but by the end all of them had done it.

Benson was first holder! As you can tell he was really nervous.

Once he had a good experience holding the first one he couldn't stop though. The next thirty minutes were full of him telling me or Lisa, "I want to hold that one!"

This was as close as Cameron wanted to get at first:

But he too quickly adapted.

 After Jack's initial reaction I was just impressed that he was in there running around with the goats and not panicking at my side the whole time, but a few minutes before we were going to leave he suddenly said, "I want to hold one Mom!"

That a boy, Jack!

We went back a few days later to show Jayce too. Spencer does not easily go to other people, but Ray made him feel right at home:

And Jayce held one for maybe a minute. I could tell they kind of grossed him out and when I asked him about it in the car on the way home he said, "Yeah. I mean, you hold them right where they pee." Once a Porter, always a Porter!

Notice his March mustache? What a babe, even with a stache.