Big Scare

Yesterday we woke up to rain and thunder and eggs tweeting.

It was Hatch Day!

At least for some of our cute little d'Uccles.  The other eggs are only part way through.

I was so excited because I love watching them hatch.

Then the worse thing that could happen did.......the electricity went out.

But my dad has a plan in place for this and soon my mom, big brother and I had everything

in place to transfer both incubators out to my mom's car where we could plug them into 

an inverter and keep them going.   

The power was out so long we ended having to drive the car for a while because sitting that 

long with the engine running isn't a good idea.

So off to town we went. On the way we discovered that a tornado missed our house by about one mile.  We were very lucky.

My treated us to Chinese food for lunch and while we were eating, out in the car the first 

chick hatched......we named him Ming Ming and he his so cute.

Barred Holland Flock update

Xavier 

 My flock is coming along really well.   My mom is helping me and.  We are now working on the third generation of white egg layers.  The eggs have increased in size by 1 cm. in both width and length and the white has been lightened by about two shades.

My mom thinks that the majority of the improvements come from  diet and environment mostly and partly from selective breeding.

This years hatches have been from much larger eggs.   The chicks are bigger and more robust.  We have had a 95% hatch rate.
Our girls had a hard winter.  It never snows her.  Heck......we live
in the South.  But....this year it snowed. Three times and the girls never missed a beat.   They never stopped laying.