Miracles in my hands

****I hope that if you are still following this blog, you haven't been completely bored with all the chicken coverage lately but I just can't help but share this egg adventure that we're on! I hope you are able to enjoy it along with us! :)

I was a little over two weeks ago now that we went out to check on Chipmunk and her chicks that were due to hatch...

...two out of five had hatched... another one had hatched and died.... and then we found this....

 Our last ditch effort to get a "Daisy" egg to hatch, was actually hatching!!!!

We left it alone all day until Daddy came home from work and we found it still in the egg and not making any progress.... We could see its little peak so we knew it could at least breath but it was SO hot out that day (in the 90's in the Pacific Northwest is stinkin hot!) and the thin lining of the egg that was around the chick was drying out.... I was not about to lose this little guy after trying so very hard to get a Daisy egg to hatch...

So with the girls and hubby right there cheering me on, and the expectant parents watching on from the chicken run (yeah, I know, they probably had no idea what was going on but hey it made for a nice picture! lol) I slowly but surely chipped away at the egg shell....

And then all of a sudden she plopped out into my hand!! 

After so many tries to get this little guy, we finally got a Daisy egg to hatch!!!  I was choking by the tears as she hatched into this world right there in my hand....

  Meet Rosemary!! (R has a theme of naming chickens.... Daisy, Tulip and now Rosemary!)

There are no words to describe how lucky I felt that night to have not only witnessed this amazing event but to experience it first hand! Literally!!

I can tho attempt to describe the feeling I felt the next morning when I went to check on her and found her face down in the bedding and I thought she was dead.... It was as if all the air was sucked out of me and the world around me didn't exist for a moment until I saw the ever so slight movement of her beak and then my memories are a blur of first scooping her cold little body up in my hands, (cold as if she'd been in a fridge) cuddling her up in my pjs and running for the shed to grab our incubator... I thank God that this was very early morning and the girls were still in bed. I don't know if I could have dealt with their hysteria and still kept a level head... I got her into the incubator and got it warming up while I stood there praying over her, and begging her and God to let her live....

I remembered a friend who raises chickens say one time that if you mess with them it makes it harder for them to die... so for the next half hour or so, I stood there rubbed her back and sometimes her belly and after that she started to get warm, started to move a bit and within an hour or so she was making the faintest little cheeps... that were music to my ears...

I don't have any pictures of her during those few hours. I didn't know what the outcome was going to be and didn't want to have pictures of her like that in case it ended badly but now I wish I did.... knowing that by the end of the day she would be fluffed out and walking around!

Little Rosemary is now 3 weeks old and doing great! Can you believe this is the same little chick? We are definitely counting our blessings... and our chickens!! Another hen has gone broody and is sitting on three eggs as we speak! :) This egg adventure continues!