Day Twelve

Six New Chicks

It takes 21 days for a chick to hatch after laying.  We have a seven egg incubator.  I take freshly laid eggs from under our sitting hens and put them into our incubator in my office and voila, 21 days latter we have up to 7 new chicks.  This is the forth time I've hatched chicks this way, and I plan to keep this cycle going.  This is seven birds every 21 days.  The newly hatched chicks need heat ( they normally tuck under their mothers hot body), so we keep them in the house in a box on top of a heating pad.  I feed them uncooked brown rice for the first week, Master Cho says this increases the length of their digestive tract allowing them to be more efficient in digesting feed over their life span.  After a week or so I integrate the new chicks into our flock first using a big cage to have the chicks get enough size to survive the pecking order of the big hens.

My plan is to begin eating some of the older birds as I replace them with the younger birds.  They stop laying after several years.  I think I'll harvest one tomorrow and put that into our black eye pea soup.  This is a good way to make sure my meat is healthy and naturally raised.

I had eggs today for breakfast, avocados and salsa in addition to my daily fruit smoothie.

For lunch I had a salad with green leaf lettuce and beets.

Jennifer is hosting her monthly Friday night yoga potluck tonight with donations going to help a needy family in India.  I harvested taro this morning before going to work and Jennifer crafted them into taro burgers for tonights main course.