Rooster!! lolI officially have my first Buckeye! The first pip was noticed this morning just after I posted. Now I have one hatched, two more pipped, and 7 more to go.
I have to say, he's a robust little guy. Not out of the shell more than an hour and one of the first things I've noticed is that he has such sturdy legs! And standing and moving around really well too.
Shhh! Don't be bursting her bubble! Not every first one that hatches is a rooster.
I just started with Buckeyes and obtained a gorgeous trio from Joe Shumaker in the fall. I hatched out a dozen chicks on Thanksgiving in an incubator because you never know when something might happen to your lone rooster during winter! Then both hens went broody and I thought what the heck, let's see if they will do their job; and hardened my heart that if the chicks die, they die, because I had nowhere else to keep more chicks through winter. They hatched 5 chicks in their hoop coop in the unheated barn a few days before Christmas, well actually three then and two more some days later. One chick died (dunno why, found it pancaked one morning), and after a week or so one hen decided she was done with motherhood and returned to hanging out with the rooster, but the other hen is still doing a great job mothering the chicks. It was bitter cold last week, single digits at night, low 20s during the days, and all the chicks are still happy, healthy, and active. I DO have a heat bulb hanging directly in front of their floor-level nest box with the food and water right there as well. But even in the awful cold, they come out to eat, drink, and practice flying and jumping around the pen; then go back to cuddle under mama.
(Re post 4474 with the photo of four chicks)
