I know the chickens love anything on a paper plate, but after they devoured not only the slice of water melon, but half the paper plate as well, I decided it was better to just hang the watermelon. It keeps it off the ground, so away from the ants and chicken droppings, and they aren’t filling up on paper.
Yes, that is a whole slice of watermelon. The humans aren’t overly found of the yellow watermelon. The chickens love it. So there you go.
I have three chickens using the roost! I saw them up there the other night, and then in the morning saw the accumulation of droppings under the board they were sitting on. Huzzah! (Yup, excited about droppings. Oh dear.)
If I take a moment and sit with the chickens, they will still come up and sit on my lap. They check for treats first, but there are usually a couple that try to settle down for a nap in the crook of my arm. Aw. That is Magic eye-balling me when I took the picture. She was almost asleep when the third chicken hopped up. There isn’t quite enough room for three sleeping chickens on my lap!
Apparently the poop catcher under the roost is also scary. I noticed that the chickens had stopped even playing on the roost, so I took out the poop catcher, changed out the wobbly branch and put the 2×3 back in. The chickens appreciate the change.
I’ll try to put it back once they start actually sleeping up there. They still huddle in the corner together now.
We did health checks with weight, vent and feet check, and band size check. The chicks are still putting on weight, which is good. Magic is the largest at 753g (1.66 lbs). They are over 8 weeks old, so we have also introduced scratch grains. We are staying on chick feed, though. One of the local suppliers of the organic grower feed has some on back order, so we are waiting for that. A bit frustrating to have the labels say chick feed to 8 weeks, and layer feed for over 16 weeks, but the feed for 8-16 weeks is no where to be found.
Critters and Craft 