Hello All!
I've been completely out of commission on this board for months and months because of family things and a ridiculous amount of work, but I am hoping things are lightening up now so I can resume at least an approximation of normal life. Still working 4-5 12 hour shifts each week, but it's better than the 6-7 I was doind for months there. The hospital has been horribly busy for a while now--people are really getting sick at an alarming rate this winter, and I see looking at some of the past posts that a lot of you are getting hit with the same illnesses we are seeing here. Hope everyone is at least starting to feel a little better. My boys and I have all been sick off and on for months now, and I've got the bad Mommy of the year award for not being home enough (too much work).
However, it is getting on towards that hatching and chicken time of year, though none of my chickens at the house seem to realize that since they haven't laid one stinkin' egg since October. Buggers. I'm not sure how our chickens in Duchesne are doing, since we haven't been able to get into the land for weeks now because of the snow. I'm pretty worried about them--it has been so cold, I'm afraid I might find dead frozen chickens when we get up there next. Unfortunately, all of my legbars and BLRW's are up there, so that would be a serious bummer. I wanted to try to get up there this weekend--had a big plan to bring sleds and use them to hike food up to where the coops are, since the drive into there from the main road is virtually unpassable, even with our 4WD. Now that everything is iced over, I'm not sure we're going to be able to do even that. If we can't get in there soon, we will have starved frozen chickens. Need a stinking snowmobile these days to get anywhere, I swear. If it doesn't drop anymore snow, I may try to get in this Sunday when I am finally off work for a couple of days (theoretically, though that may not actually happen

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I really want to start hatching eggs again soon. That big ole incubator is just sitting there staring at me longingly. Joel (my middle boy) is dying to have Welsummers again. I want a couple of Marans just for the pretty eggs. And, if any of the legbars are still alive, I would really like to hatch those eggs. And the BLRW's, of course. I don't think I will hatch as many this year as last year, though--the whole chicken plague thing that went through my place last year kind of disheartened us. I'm definitely not going to buy any chicks from folks I don't know enough about to trust, since that's where we traced that blasted disaster back to. I also don't have enough time to do as much hatching, plus Zach wants to use one of the incubators for his leopard geckos, since they are getting close to breeding. Those suckers take months to hatch out.
Anyway, must get back to work now--this has been one of the most busy nights we've had because of all the ice and the falls and fractures from it. Plus I have to get through my annual review before I go home this morning. Really just want to go to bed, since I have to be back again tonight, but it's going to be a few more hours...
Donna