New Australian member

Hi and from SA. Good luck with your hatch!

Thankyou to everyone for the warm welcome - as you can tell by my delayed replay, I'm provably antipodean now

I'll definitely name the hens Halloween names! Alas for the roosters, all but one will have to go, but I am very lucky - my council accepts the keeping of one rooster, subject to visiting to make sure that the coop has sufficient size and that the flock is being kept in a good condition. I'm fine with that - actually, it's rather nice to know that they care and how serious they are about animal mills in our area.

I've had chickens before, but we had one fox get in for the first lot (feathers everywhere) and the second lot may have been stolen (there was not even a feather out of place - all hens and all eggs were just gone with nary a squark and no breakages). These ones are getting more of a fort knox style arrangement.

My only issue right now is that my nearly-three-year-old has informed me she will be 'a good chicken mommy' and I have to have the incubator in a room with a child gate - we grabbed her (just) before she sat on the eggs, but we know that the moment it's unguarded, she'll be in there and 'rescuing' them so she can sit on them.