Month: April 2019

Storm

On By CarynIn Coop

We had a big thunderstorm with 60-80 mile and hour winds and hail. I can’t verify the hail because the storm hit about 8:45 and it was too dark to see, but the weather app says we had hail, so there we go. It was loud.

Screen shot from the weather app during the storm

And wet, so much rain so quickly. Despite putting more dirt in front of the coop, the whole area was a muddy mess in the morning. I had almost a full bale of compressed straw (outdoor cat cold boxes don’t use much), so I took it down to the coop, laid it over the mud, and pressed it down with my feet. It is still pretty sloppy, but at least I no longer sink up to my ankles and come away full of mud.

Temporary mud control

Since the chicks are stuck inside, I tried hanging a romaine lettuce head in their area as enrichment. I used a screwdriver to push some plastic twine through the stem, then hung it in the chick area.

Stringing romaine lettuce

Chicks don’t seem thrilled.

Romaine lettuce hanging in the coop.

But Pooh finding a caterpillar was great fun!

Enrichment

On By CarynIn chickens, Craft

The chicks enjoyed their second time outside even more than the first! And they were even more excited about the grass and dirt I put in their inside area; not afraid of it at all, quite the opposite.

Actually perching!

They are also exploring the perch, so I made them another one using some 2x4s.

New practice perch made of 2x4s

Outside!

On By CarynIn chickens

What a big day! We decided the best way to give the chicks a bigger enclosure was to line the old dog cage with chicken wire. We put pine shavings down inside and moved them in during the morning. They seem to appreciate the larger space. We rigged some scrap 2×4 together and hung it from the rafters and added metal eyes to hang the water and food jars in the new space. We had to adjust the height a bit, but it seems to work without too much swinging.

Larger space for the chicks

The chicks also had their first outside time. They seemed to enjoy running on the dirt and picking at leaves. We did another step for training our dog and had him lay down by the cage while the chicks moved around.

Our dog outside the chick enclosure

He could see them this time, but he did well not freaking out. And we protected the chicks from our outside cat, who thought she was going to get a snack!

Oops

On By CarynIn chickens

While we cleaned out the brooder, we had a trial run on a larger space for the chicks. We took an old dog enclosure and put it in the corner of the coop and put a couple of chicks in at first to see if they could escape. They seemed OK, so my eldest sat with them and we put them all in there.

Shortly after we shot the video the chicks started to pop through the gaps! Pop, pop, pop! We had a scramble getting the chicks rounded up and putting up barriers to keep them contained. We should have shot video of that, but we were much more concerned about escaped chicks!

I was able to get the old brooder quickly cleaned out while my eldest herded chicks. Then we put the chicks back without further incident, but we will have to rethink the new space.

Growing and growing

On By CarynIn chickens

The chicks are now 16 days old, and have grown so much! It was too cold to get them out of the brooder and weigh them, but we’ll do that soon, on a nicer day. I did need to raise up one of the heaters because the larger chicks had to duck and crawl to get in. I kept the other one down low because we still have smaller chicks. Their colors are definitely changing and differing. We have lighter shaded chicks and darker chicks. The feed store said that their chick source guaranteed 95% females. This should be interesting.