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They are the most hyper thing I've ever seen! This last hatch I did was mixed chicken eggs and quail. (An experiment?) The chicks hatched a day or two before the quail and I put them all in the brooder together. Even though I've now moved the chicken chick§ into a seperate cage, the quail are amazingly CALM! So I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm going to see what happens. The big chÍcks "mothered" the quail chicks. Very strange, sÓ far all appear to be strong and healthy.

I have 3 pekin ducks ready to graduate to the freezer this weekend.  I've never butchered them before but
I've done chickens before.  Is there anything different that I need to keep in mind?

Most of them are still alive and growing.  I lost a couple due to splayed legs though.

It's amazing how fast they already are, and they're not even the size of a golf ball yet!

I'm one of the few people that have managed to kill bamboo!  So, growing instructions from
me aren't worth much.

The patches that I know of are out of control messes though.
They replicate via runners and are pretty good at getting around or through barriers.
Like mint, it can become a plague in a couple of years.

Even after the warning I just gave you, I still wish I had been able to get mine to grow.

I'm considering procuring a couple of bamboo plants for my small suburban "homestead."  I'm thinking I'll go with the Yellow Grove variety, as it's hearty enough for my region, and doesn't get too tall.  They say it'll be around 2" wide, and that sounds like a potential lifetime supply of stakes and trellis' to me.  If you have experience with bamboo, I'd love to hear your thoughts/suggestions/precautions.

Thanks guys.  Have a good one!

Chad

Wow! You have a really good hatch rate. I've been moving chicks around all morning here. I lost most of my spring hatches this year. I'm done though. Ready to move on into summer, gardening, canning and such.

Right now I think I have 48.  Once I got to around 30, it started getting hard to keep count.
Most hatched Friday night and Saturday morning.  Two hatched early yesterday, and then nothing
for the rest of the day.  I figured they were done.  When I went to move the two that hatched
yesterday to the brooder, I discovered three more that hatched over night!

I know they say that you shouldn't help them hatch, but there were about five that I helped.  They
had managed to remove the top of the egg shell, but I think the other birds moving around and knocking
into the un-hatche eggs got them disoriented and they started moving in the wrong direction.  So I helped them out.
The ones I helped must be ok, because I can't pick them out from the ones I didn't help.

I know I'm late "chirping in" here but one thing to consider is the direction of the sun. It seemed natural for me to place my chickens near my garden, but I discovered that in the winter it gets very little and late afternoon sun and summertime it gets early morning and all day sun. If I had placed it on the other side of my property where the sun shines in the winter it wouldn't be as cold and it would be shaded in summer. But I'm not moving it. So I do other things to shelter them like four pieces of logs and a sheet of plywood as a shady area in the run. I can't complain about their egg production so I guess they must be doing okay. 

I don't have anything planted in the run. But I always give them buckets of weeds and greens from the yard and garden.

So how many hatched total? My last batch was six quail and six chicken eggs at the same time. Incubator had a hitch due to a brief power outage while I was at work one day. But I tossed them all in the brooder together and they're doing great. They hatched on the 12-14th so I'm ready to seperate them. This (I think) will be my last batch of chicks for the year. I need to focus on some other projects.

My quail started hatching last night.  They weren't supposed to start until tomorrow, so I was completely surprised!

When I went to bed there were two out of their shells.
When I woke up there were nine.
Then my wife called and told me that #10 hatched when I was on my way to work.

I've been wondering all day how many more have hatched.  I can't wait to get home!