Tweenage Chicks
The day I posted about a box that I picked up from the Post Office early one morning had the most hits in the short history of this blog. I didn’t realize ya’ll were so thrilled by chicks, but hey - I aim to please, so here’s the update.
The chicks are still living in their box, but it’s starting to look like we need to really work on another option. I feel badly for them - how will they survive moving from their cute little cozy garage condo to an out of the house dwelling? Will they be warm enough? We won’t just throw them out on the street. I mean, we’re not that heartless. We’ll make sure they move to appropriate enough accommodation. But you know a mother’s heart. Actually, that’s not true. I’d probably be fine putting them down in the barn with all that hay to rummage through, poop on, and hide in, but Prince Farming is not interested in losing any chicks.
It’s amazing how fast chicks grow - in human terms they’re not even a month old, but in chicken time they’ve reached that full gangly, mostly ugly, very curious and brave tweenage stage.
This is not a stressed out tween - she’s(?) just coming to see what hand-outs I might have. They absolutely love crickets and earthworms. When they were tiny, we loved to watch the tug-of-war that ensued when we threw an earthworm into the box. Such mayhem you’ve never seen. Wish I could share pictures, but they moved way faster than my clicker-finger or camera shutter could deal with.
Prince Farming is having such fun trying to figure out what breeds of chicks we have. We ordered the "rainbow mix" from the hatchery, guaranteed at least 5 varieties. If any of you have ideas, leave them in the comments section - you have more chicken experience than we do, for sure.
The white and yellow ones are always in the front. The ones you can’t really see in this shot are ones that looked like chipmunks when they were tiny. They still have the same coloring, but its all ruffled now - in this tween-age stage.
Here’s another variety that have very scruffy necks - like their "neck hair" is way long and sticks out on end, like significant "bed head" - except we’d probably have to call it "bed-neck" in this case.
We knew they were maturing when we found a brave chick on top of their water jug. Prince Farming rigged all sorts of things in their box to allow more of them to "roost" at the same time. I’ve seen them all lined up on these rods - but the chicken ones jump down when I bring my camera by.
Ooh, wait - here’s one with more of them roosting. There’s a bit of movement (probably scrambling to get down) but you get the idea
By the way - for those who were concerned about our first family of chicks (the ones we got unexpectedly and so weren’t totally prepared for), Prince Farming and I were working down at the barn recently and we heard chickens!! We’ve actually seen the rooster a couple of times, but don’t know who else is a survivor. This is truely a case of "Survival of the Fittest." We’d carelessly left some chicken feed down there. And there are puddles all around the barn, not to mention an entire breeding ground for worms and crickets, so they have fared really well - without our help, thank you very much. Maybe that’s the way to go.
When scouting around for some cool farm shots last night, I remembered this little detail. Maybe this sentry is the chicken guard of Gredemeer. He is stationed right on the old barn door-post. Proud, and cocky, and faithful - he’s been there from the beginning.
