I'm a Chicken Mommy

My eggs hatched!  I was turning them one day after lunch when I heard some chirping and realized the chick in the egg was talking to me.  You can see a little chipped spot on the shell where the chick was trying to break out.  The first baby wasn't free from its shell until some time early the next morning.  You don't know how difficult it was to resist breaking the shell and freeing the chick sooner.  But, I resisted.
 

Here is one a few hours after it hatched.  It was still wet.

I had two batches of eggs that hatched about a week apart.  The bigger chicks in this picture are a little over two weeks old and the tiny ones are almost a week.

I love to watch the fluffy little babies.  They are already flapping their wings and scratching at the ground.  I like to raise my chicks on dirt instead of some other type of bedding.  These babies are living outside in a secure area with a doghouse for their coop.  When they are older we will move them in with their parents.

We are going to make a mini coop and yard next to our main chicken area for raising new layers and meat birds.  I hope one of our chickens will go broody.  It would be so neat to see a clutch of chicks raised naturally.