When we decided to start this adventure we knew for sure one of the first animals we wanted to have on our farm was chickens. They are fairly simple to raise, you get the benefits of both meat and eggs, and it doesn't take to long for you to have a "finished product." We first chose to go with the Rhode Island Reds because they were dual purpose birds meaning they became large enough to be meat birds and were also good egg producers laying on average between 200 and 300 eggs per year per bird. We bought 40 straight run (meaning unknown sexes) and ended up with only 20 hens so we were able to put around 18 in our freezer. What I didn't expect when we decided to start raising chickens was how fun it was going to be. Our first group we bought chicks, of course, and kept them in their brooder with their heat lamp like you are suppose to do. When they were older we put them out in their coop and let them free range when we were there to keep and eye on their safety. When the reached around 6 months of age they started laying eggs and the excitement in the kids eye over going and gathering the eggs and watching the number you gathered grow daily was hilarious. Our youngest daughter would call her daddy everyday after she gathered the eggs and tell him with excitement "daddy we got 18 today!"

Now, this year we decided to try our hand at incubating some eggs. We filled our incubator with our 42 eggs and set out thinking we were going to have 42 little chirpy chicks in just 21 days. Well, it doesn't work like that, we come to find out the hard way that rarely does everyone of the eggs you incubate produce a chick. Our first go around, however, was even less than half of the average we had a disappointing ONE chick hatch successfully. Meet Nugget...