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.
I stuck a threaded hook in the stem of a cabbage and hung it up for the chickens. They were not impressed. Interested, but they can’t seem to get enough enthusiasm to eat it.
The apple I hung up a couple days ago was devoured. But not right away. We’ll see what happens with the cabbage.
So I have been labeling all my YouTube videos with “chicks”. Now that they are fully feathered, I am labelling them “pullets”, except I’m not so sure they are all pullets. I took a picture of Seashell and Tigger on the chicken swing together and I think that Seashell may be a cockerel (male chicken under one year old), not a pullet (female chicken under one year old). Seashell is developing black feathers under his (?) chin, much like adult Faverolle roosters.
So there is a debate in the household on chicken names. My eldest would like the cockerel we keep (oh yes, it looks like if there is one, there are maybe 3 or 4) to be named Cockatrice. My husband thinks it would be funnier for the blog to have a rooster named Seashell. Maybe when we know for sure, we’ll do a poll.
Critters and Craft 