All this excitement

With all this excitement in the basement, I was able to get a better pic of an interested Cyrus with his head through the cat door. :)

Biele hen hatched 1 chick yesterday, and another today. This inspired me to call Elmer the Incubator, and indeed, he had 3 chicks hatched yesterday as well. That is all I will get from him, but Biele still has 8 eggs left under her.

At first I was worried (overthinking my chickens according to The Hub) that Biele would peck at the chicks she was hatching. There was quite a bit of chick hollering that alerted me to the first one being born, and she did not accept the aliens I had put in with her before. But after a day of coexisting, she's got the mama thing down. She was giving me the stink eye when I was trying to get pics of her chicks today. You can just see their 2 little heads poking out behind hers.

Elmer's 3 were easily added to the 2 in the other crate. In the red pic, you can see the size difference that a few days makes. I turned off the heat lamp in the other pic, and the poor little ones were struggling to get under the bigger ones for warmth. They get chilled pretty fast.

And in the final pic you can see the week-old chicks are already getting wing feathers. Growing up already!