Tuesday April 7th… VICKI’S BIRTHDAY!!!!!! Today we celebrate……

Today is Vick’s day…… no matter what she wants, where she wants to go, what she wants to do…… it’s totally up to her! I will be her slave for the day…
I went out early and turned Iggy and Luke loose, which is also like leaving Phillip out also, because he has, for some reason, taken up residence in the new barn with Timmy and Tina, out in the barn entry. Now, even on rainy, cold days, he is free to go out or stay in…… and he chooses what to do intelligently. If it stops raining for a bit, he goes out…… but if it starts to rain again, he immediately comes into the barn or goes under the shelter of a roof or something to get out of the rain. He usually just goes outside the alpaca door under the roof and sits, then comes back inside for awhile.
We had one little black chick last night around 11:45. He had just fully exited the egg and still had the umbilical cord attached to the egg shell, so we let him alone until this morning when I went out and he was perky and dry…… ready to meet the world, so I transferred it to the heated box to eat and drink. We will keep tabs on others slated to hatch today. We just hope a bunch of the eggs were fertile and did well in the incubator. The first duck eggs exit the incubator on the eleventh, so we’re awaiting that too. We decided to keep incubating until June 30th and then shut the incubator down, because at that date, it will give whatever hatches three full months of warmth to grow a full coverage of feathers for fall and winter and besides, three months of nursing an incubator is enough. (although fun) All in all, it wouldn’t be a good thing to hatch them any later than July anyway…… because young birds don’t do well in the cold…… Nature planned it that way……………… Pictures of chicks…later today, when there’s more.
I’ll know what the day will bring (other than snowflakes) when Vicki get’s up. (sleeping in on her Birthday) I’ll wait, I love her!!