EGGS FOR SALE!!!

Rosecomb Bantam eggs available for sale: BBRed, Brassy Back/Blue Brassy Back. Pricing and full information here. Limited time offer, if you want colored Rosecombs and you aren't in CA this is your best (only?) chance to get them from me. Don't wait for me to have birds for sale in the fall, get the eggs now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Batch 3 chicks

Chick numbers from batch 3 (tiny batch because I only collected half a week)

T: Brassy Male & Blue Brassy Male X Brassy, Blue Brassy, & BBB Splash females: 2 Brassy Back
O2: BBRed X BBRed: 2 BBRed
B: BBRed male X Brown Red females: 2 BBRed, 1 Brown Red
T1: BBRed male X F1 Crele female: 2 Crele
T2: F1 Crele male X BBRed females: 1 Crele, 1 BBRed
T3: F1 Cuckoo male X Black female: 2 Cuckoo
T4: Black male X F1 Cuckoo females: 1 Black
T5: Black male X F1 Cuckoo females: 2 Cuckoo, 2 Black
T7: Brown Red male X BBRed females: 2 BBRed, 2 Brown Red
N1: BBRed X BBRed: 1 BBRed
N4: Black X Black: 2 Black
N5: Black X Black: 1 Black

Still having problems with excessive embryo mortality, and it's highly variable from one batch to the next. I did just change the humidity, as it had gotten too high, and that may have contributed. It is SO frustrating. Batch 4 (this weekend) was a big hatch but not a good hatch, too many were fully developed but didn't make it. I know some of it is genetic (I got 100% hatch on the Cuckoos, but pretty bad % on Blacks) but I'm sure a lot of it is incubation issues, probably more likely humidity problems than anything else. I'm not that great at incubating eggs. I think it might be helpful if I wait even longer to move them into the hatcher though, like let them ALL pip before moving any. Hmmmmm. Dang, it drives me up the wall.

In other news.. the wedding this weekend was lovely, and I've now satisfied my quota for getting dressed up once a year... K, you looked absolutely beautiful! :-) I busted loose my wonderful (ha ha) dance moves and did the electric slide... it's been a while, I'd forgotten it!

I got my new long reins this morning, so I get to start working with Shylah again on that. She's been doing GREAT. Two days ago was the first time she ever bucked (no, I'm not riding her yet, just lungeing with the saddle on). It was just little hops really, but it was funny because she has never done that. It really doesn't worry me, I think she'll be fine. I'm debating if I should be the first one to ride her. I want to, just for the sake of being the first one to ride her since I've done all her other training, but at the same time I'm totally scared to do it. As much as I think she'll be fine, what if she's not?! Am I the best person to handle that? Would it be wiser to have one person up and one on the ground? If I'm not the first person to ride her, I will have my neighbor do it, she's young and skinny and a better rider than I could ever dream of being! We'll see...

I recently noticed the "radio" section of the iTunes program. Wow! This is awesome! I always listed to music when I'm drawing, but I get tired of flipping stations on my little portable walkman, and plus it's having some dumb problem where if I move it, it shuts off... Sometimes I just play CDs on the big stereo system, but I wanted more diversity. I don't have a lot of songs in my iTunes thing, but why had I never noticed the radio?? So today I have been listening to "Classical, Spanish, and Flamenco Guitar Variations." It's great music, very energizing!

Ok, back to drawing chickens..

It's a boy!

The chick has hatched! (just to remind you, I've been photographing the same egg for the last ~3 weeks of incubation, this is the result of that one egg). There were 7 hatched by this morning (a LOT more on the way!) and I'd say from the looks of it this little guy was probably the second oldest (based on fluffiness!). How do I know it's a boy? All the cuckoo colored ones from that particular breeding pen are male, it's a sex-linked color. Cute isn't he? I didn't think I'd be able to get a decent pic while he's still inside the hatcher but it turns out if I put the camera at just the right angle I can take a successful flash photo through the Plexiglas door. It's 99.1 degrees in there, 65% humidity.

19 days

Sorry I didn't manage to get a pic yesterday, it would have looked just like day 17 anyway. I was busy all day and got home later than I anticipated at night and was just too tired.

So this is day 19, I didn't realize the pic was quite that dark when I took it, but you don't really need to see the other end of the egg anyway. It's photographed in the same position as always. The chick has "pipped," meaning it has broken the shell and started the process of hatching. So the light "chip" area you see there is the broken part of the shell, and the darkness near that inside the egg is the chick's beak. It is possible it may be hatched by morning, but there's no way to predict that for certain, they are highly variable and none of them give me a schedule. ;-) I won't have a chick pic for you til Sunday afternoon, since I can't open the hatcher between now and then (it would mess up the humidity if I did).

Prince Charming?

Call me crazy but I totally love toads.




That warty skin, that sweet face, those bulging eyes... who can resist a toad? They are few and far between these days though, this is the only one I've seen since probably about two years ago. When we first moved to this area in 1985, I remember seeing toads and frogs at some of the houses we looked at (I was QUITE young, don't forget!) and that sort of became my criteria for houses. If they didn't have frogs or toads somewhere, I wasn't impressed. So when we looked at the ranch that my parents ended up buying, it was love at first sight for me because the front yard was FULL of teeny baby toads. OMG they are so cute!!! There must have been at least hundreds of them all over the yard and in little burrows going under the sidewalk. I was absolutely enthralled. I don't even think I went with the rest of the family to look around the house, I just sat in the yard and played with toads the whole time.

For several years there was a huge toad population, they were all over the yard and all over the garden. They would hide in the cracked dirt in the garden (you know how when wet dirt dries out it cracks?) so then when the garden would get watered again they would all come out of the cracks and hop around. But over the years the population went down and now I hardly ever see one. I know that's somewhat a localized thing, because there were other places where I would see them, but even overall their population has gone way down. A couple years ago there were baby toads around the house again, you could go out at night with a flashlight and see a dozen or so, but nothing like the hundreds that used to live in the front yard on the big ranch. I miss the toads!

Yeah, okay, so maybe I'm a little weird.

Bloomin

Irises and roses.

17 days

Remember how little the air cell was when the egg was first incubated? The last photograph will be taken on Friday when I move the eggs into the hatcher. After that I need to leave them alone til Sunday, it's crucial to maintain a certain humidity level in the hatcher, so I can't mess with it then.

Interesting Things

Last month I went through some of the keywords that people put into search engines that led them to my website(s) so I think I'll do that again. You know what's pretty funny-- the phrases I typed in here last time.. now they are coming up even MORE in searches because now they really do exist in writing on this domain! So, like, the bubble butt thing for example, OMG, comes up all the time now. Won't they be disappointed when they realize this is so not what they're looking for (rolls eyes). So, without repeating last month's stuff, here are some new phrases from either the art domain or the rosecomb domain:

hairy beast (must have been something I said about horses)
does fate really happen (I don't know, what do you think?)
bantam draft horse (tee hee, awwww cute!)
cool lady trying to make call (what??)
what kind of sound to do roosters do (approximately 20 different vocalizations)
how tall is a chicken egg in inches (depends on the egg!)
diapers for ducks (I've seen these on the web...)
the art of chicken butt (ummm...)
show me chicken earlobes (is that like show me the money?)
goober people drawings (what?!)
6 foot dog (that's either a horrible deformity or a really big dog!)
hot drawings (ooooh yeah...)
why call me a chicken (why not?)
bed bug (okay, that's weird)
roadhouse peanut compost (and that's weird too!)
armpits (always a good way to end a list...)

16 days, horses, and shopping

Yup, pretty opaque:

I went to the mall today. I have a severe aversion to shopping, so this was a rare moment. I really needed to go though. I dragged my friend K.V. along for moral support, and had she not been there I probably would have zipped through and said "nope, nothing I like" and gone home and sulked and then had to wear jeans and a t-shirt to a wedding I'm attending this weekend. Ok, slight exaggeration perhaps, but I'm not the world's most open-minded shopper. So I probably drove her insane by being so picky and indecisive, but in the end we found a cute outfit. Now I just need to figure out what to do with my hair. These dress-up events are few and far between so this is no small undertaking..

In other news, there is another horse here again. Poor Gwen, she was probably rejoicing that Sampson went home, and now there's another boy here to deal with. I'm not sure how long he will be here, probably a short-term thing but we'll see. This is Patrick the thoroughbred, and I just cannot take him seriously with that flymask on! (has to wear it due to an eye problem):

There was a lot of squealing and kicking going on when he met the girls (and in fact just ten minutes ago I heard Gwen out there squealing and kicking the fence more...it's late at night!). I think he will end up getting along well with Shylah. After the intitial kick-fest they stood at the gate for a while and talked politely with their ears forward. He REALLY makes her look short! And he's not even all *that* tall!

Random pretty picture of Shylah:

Gwen, on the other hand, tried to kill him, and might have succeeded in bodily harm if it wasn't for the heavy duty fence separating them. She's mad. She's probably still doing the angry tail swishing. She wouldn't even eat her dinner, and for Gwen not to eat, well... that's rare. She went and stood in the far corner and sulked. Here she is looking somewhat possessed due to the camera flash:

15 days, and chick pix

And in case anyone is chickening vicariously through me, here are all the babies as of today.

First batch, Cuckoos and Crele X. Cuckoos are looking very dark this year, hmm... Crele things are weird, who knows.. Oh, and one little Silver cross in there too...she's super cute!

First batch, Black, BBRed, Brassy Back, Blue Brassy Back, and one Blue Brassy Splash:

Second batch, all colors together:

Third batch, all colors together: