Hello there my friends!  I apologize for being absent lately.  My family has been on a mission to have some summer fun!  It started last week with a trip to my parents cottage on the lake for a weekend of boating, tubing, jet skiing, fishing and swimming.  It started off tragically when I lost my favorite hen, a Delaware whom we called “Grace.”  My suspicions are she died from being egg bound.  I noticed she was being rather lethargic and not interested in anything.  I’ve seen this behavior before in a young hen who had just started laying and became egg bound, that had a happy ending.  I started treatment with a 20 minute soak in a warm bath which resulted in her laying a rubber egg.  However, she had another stuck, this is very rare but the signs were all there, she was still acting the same and this time, yolk was oozing out of her.  A good indication an egg had broke inside her.  I did my best to help her, but in the end, it was out of my hands and she left us.  I believe this happened as a result of the extreme temps we’ve had here lately.  She did not tolerate it well despite my efforts to keep her cool and as comfortable as possible.  All my chickens get free choice crushed oyster shell as their calcium supplement, so I don’t believe she was deficient.  It was very sad, she not only was my favorite, she was my first chicken:(

So, our mission for fun continues with a trip to Michigan Adventures, an amusement park on the other side of the state.  The kids had a blast!  This trip has become almost traditional for our family.  Now it’s back to reality, which for me, isn’t a bad thing.  I missed my animals.  I have found I am more of a home body nowadays.  Now that I have my little farm, I never want to leave what I love!

Within all the fun away, there was still fun going on here at home with the births of 12 new Coturnix Quail chicks and 1 Serama chick.  I also adopted 2 Ameraucana bantams!  I also set more Serama eggs and will be setting more quail eggs in the incubator this week.  I thought I was going to be done incubating until next spring, but then my husband talked me into one last hatch before we shut down the bator.  Needless to say, the hatch-o-holic in me didn’t argue!

What have you all been up to?