Week 6

Week 6 with the chicks was eventful! The girls went outside for good on Sunday July 12th, which was the same day I was having my grad party. So at around 10 AM that morning I unscrewed the back piece off of my run, and attached the run to the hen house with screws (I had to run to the hardware store to get longer screws, unfortunately, but I stopped for fresh bagels on my way! Yum!). After this, I filled the hen house with pine shavings, and brought the chicks out with the help of a good friend and my boyfriend. The girls avoided the house for the most part, but cheerily pranced around on the grass all day. Come nighttime, the chicks were all still huddled in a corner of the run. So one by one, I placed the reluctant chicks in their new home and said goodnight. That was the only night I had to put the girls away physically...every night since then, the girls have gravitated to their home once it started to get dark (7ish) and I've closed and locked the door soon after (8ish). Today is Thursday and the chicks have eaten and/ or trampled on and/or pooped on every inch the 15 sq-ft run has to offer. I'm thinking of rotating my attached coop/hen house each week until I construct a larger run; although, moving the structure is pretty much a 3 person job. I'll do my best and learn as I go! Right now I'm reading the book, Dirty Chick, by Antonia Murphy, and I'm loving it. Antonia shares her own personal, unconventional, and hilarious farming experience.

Week 5

Week 5 with the chicks was fun in the sun. The girls have been outside some more, and they have tried several fruits and veggies now--their current favorites being strawberries and lettuce. I like to lay out a blanket and read or paint my toes alongside the girls while they dig, forage, and play in their run for a few hours. I have switched their original feed out for an organic grower's crumble. I bought a 50 lb bag of it at Blue Seal, and the girls seem to like it. The simple difference between a grower's crumble and a layer's crumble is that grower's crumble is fed to young, growing chickens that have yet to lay eggs. Chicken raisers are supposed to switch out their chickens' grower feed for layer feed at the sight of the first egg. Now that I have introduced the girls to their run outside, they're all a bit stir crazy once I take them back inside in their smaller cage. Luckily, they will be six weeks old this Wednesday and I plan to permanently put them outside in their coop this Wednesday or Thursday.

Excitingly, yesterday I heard the first "cluck" from one of the girls! They are growing so fast that they're close to retiring the "chirp" I guess! This morning I finished painting their heart-shaped sign that I will hang on the front of their coop for all who visit to see. It reads, "Laid with Love," which I figured was cute and appropriate.

I'm happy to say that all of my chicks seem to be healthy. I was nervous about the runt, Nugget, who seemed to sleep a lot more than the other chicks in her earlier weeks of life, and had pasty butt. For those of you who don't know, pasty butt is when the chickens' waste stays stuck to their hind feathers, and turns into a large, hard-to-remove chunk. I tried to gently remove the chunk when Nugget was really small by wiggling it back and forth with a warm, wet paper towel...but it wouldn't budge. If this happens to one of your chicks, DO NOT simply yank the chunk off! What I did which worked for me was monitor the chick to make sure she was still able to 'go #2' every day, and when she was about 3-4 weeks old I removed it with a little stronger of a pull back and forth. It came off and it hasn't happened to her since.