Carter, Halloween, Chickens and More!

Carter LOVES his walker....3 weeks ago he couldn't "walk" in it and now he's cruising!  He usually hangs out in this when we eat.

My little Railroad Conductor!  This is what I was (and (maybe) all of my brothers and sisters) for my first Halloween!

Halloween night...pumpkin pj's from Cece!  They say "Freightfully Cute" on them :)

My sweetie!  In the mornings Carter gets to hang out in his Mommy and Daddy's bed for a bit before we get officially get up!  Recently he started resting his head on me....what's not to love about that :)

Carter in the (clean) laundry!....It seems like just the other day he fit in the basket...now he hangs over!

Carter's cousin, Ayda, with my apron on, licking pancake batter after "helping" to make breakfast!

I had so much fun making this for my sister-in-law's baby shower!!  It's a diaper cake.

Yay!  This hen sat on eggs for 21 days and hatched 6 baby chicks!!  I separated them from the other chickens for a while, but now they are back in the main coop.  It was really neat to see this process.  First, I moved them in with the 5 week old chicks and, but the mom was forcing all of the older chicks to stay away and she wouldn't let them come near the food and water...so then I put them in the big coop.....well, when the chicks got out of the coop into the run they can fit out of the chicken wire...so I was chasing chicks around (you wouldn't believe how quick they are!!) After wasting at least an hour of my life chasing chicks I got frustrated and separated the chicks from their mom and put them under the heat lamp in their brooder box....Well, after a day I felt too sorry for the mom and I gave them back to her....she was so happy and they just follow her around and stick close...now they have figured out how to get in and out of the coop into the run and the momma hen goes with them, so they should be okay...

The cracked egg you see is from one of the hatched chicks, but the other one is an egg that didn't hatch....When the hen was sitting she would get out every once and a while for a quick bite to eat and some water....well, inevitably another hen would run in and get on the eggs and lay one of her own!  So, two additional eggs were added after the hen started sitting and since she only sat on them long enough to hatch the original six, the other two didn't make it....  silly chickens!  ...Whenever I found the other hens in the nest I had to go in and pull them out!  The real Momma would hurry back into her nest!  ....what  lot of squawking!! 

A chick headed back under the Momma for warmth.

Peeking out!  Oh, and if you're wondering why the chicks are different colors than their Mom, it's because when the hen started sitting she wasn't sitting on any eggs!!!  I donated some of the other hen's eggs to her so she wouldn't be sitting in vain!

This is the chicken tractor Aaron and I made!!  It is not quite complete here...but it's basically finished now.  This is a movable chicken coop with a door for the chickens to get out at the rear...there will be an run connected for the chickens to go into during the day.  The point of this is so we can move the coop around the yard or the pastures and when the chickens go into the run they will scratch up the ground (aerating it), eat bugs, and then fertilize!

Inside the chicken tractor.  You can see the roosts (an old ladder - it was broken), the food and water, and in the back left there are nest boxes.

I hook the coop up to the four wheeler to move it around!

The bottom of the roof hinges open so I can get to the nest boxes to collect eggs and to the food and water.

Another view.