I worked on burying the bottom of the wire on the runs and creating new paths for the water to run away from the walking areas.
There is still much to do on water management, but at least I am making progress.
On the meal worm front, they eat holes in slices of carrot! Very interesting. I replaced the carrot with slices of potato. We’ll see how that goes.
I have one chick that actually seems to enjoy staying on my lap. Cloud is usually the first one up and the last off.
She really enjoys the mealworms (yup, bribery), but then stays even when the treats are gone.
She attempted being a shoulder chicken, then another chick tried to join her and the result was chaos.
My husband and eldest started putting up wire around the runs!
We are using 1/4″ hardware cloth along the bottom to keep smaller critters out, but along the upper sides and top we are using larger fencing because of cost.
There is still lots to do before the chickens have free run of the place, but we are getting there!
Let’s see how this goes. We’ve decided to try to raise mealworms (we meaning my eldest and I with reserved consent from the rest of the family.)
I bought a 10 drawer plastic storage system and spray painted the drawers with paint designed to stick to plastic so the drawers would be darker (darkling beetles like the dark).
I then bought 500 (or so) live mealworms at the local pet store. I fed a few to the chicks, just to see what they thought. They loved them.
I put some cornmeal and oatmeal in a drawer with a few slices of carrot, then put in the meal worms.
The next step will be to make a beetle drawer.
I’m following advice from several websites, including mealwormcare.org, https://www.entoblog.com/raising-mealworms/, and https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.heritageacresmarket.com/raising-mealworms-tiered-system/amp/.
I’m not as grossed out by the crawling mass as I thought I would be, so there is hope. Let’s see how this goes.
We weighed and re-banded the chicks today. We weighed them first and moved them out to have some outside time. They are all growing nicely!
After having some chill time outside, and a bunch of grass, we worked on rebanding. (I tried to take a picture, but they are so wiggly!) They all needed new bands, some more than others, but I feel better that they all have nice loose bands now. Another plus about their five toes, that fifth toe does a great job holding up the cable tie.
While they were outside, I also cleaned out their inside area. I’m pretty sure half the litter was old food. Messy things. Good thing they are cute.
Critters and Craft 