My baby chicks are growing up so fast!

I cannot believe how fast my baby chickens are growing!  It must hurt to grow that fast!  Just look at them their first day at our home, at 3 weeks old.

Baby Chicks at 3 Weeks old.

 Look at them here at 6 weeks old!

Chicks at 6 weeks old.  Favorite treat is Watermelon!

I introduced them to my grandkids when they were 6 weeks old.  My grandson wasn't real thrilled (he is 4) but my granddaughter (age 6) is a future farmgirl.  She took to them immediately and they took to her as well.  They walked right up to her so she naturally just bent over and scooped them up one at a time.

Granddaughter holding Goldie

After allowing my granddaughter to pick them up, this Buff Orpington, who I call 'Goldie' now wants to get up in my chair with me every morning.  She will peck around on my shoes until I pick her up.  Then she will either sit in my lap or on the arm of my chair next to me.

Goldie, my new best friend.

They are really starting to display their own little personalities too.  This helped me figure out a name for each of them to.  We have the two Black Australorp's, "Alice" the biggest chicken of the flock, and "Tiny" the runt of them all.  Two Rhode Island Red's, "Red" the darkest RIR and "Lucy" the lighter colored of the two. Then there is "Goldie" is the bigger of the two Buff Orpingtons and "Buffy" the smaller one.  And finally "Barbara" is the girl Barred Rock, and "Barry" my other Barred Rock, that I believe is a boy.  Just take a look at the difference in Barry and Barbara's combs in the picture below.  You can't really see it in this picture but he is already getting a little red wattle too.  Barry is the one who rounds up the stragglers each evening before the ADOR Automatic Chicken Coop Door closes. (Read my review of the ADOR here)  He runs around making an urgent sounding squawk, flapping his wings, then once he has everyone's attention he goes up the ramp and into the coop.  The stragglers always follow him.

Comb Comparison. Barry in the front with is big red comb going back father than his eyes (he also had the beginnings of wattles that you cannot see in this picture).  Barbara in the back with her short, low, yellow comb (eating a piece of watermelon).

It seems that the chickens are a hit with everyone.  Our dog Daisy (miniature Schnauzer) wants to chase them. She spends her entire day stationed at the fence whinning at the chickens and jumping up everytime they wonder near her.  I would NEVER let her in the run because she would surely attack the chickens. (terrier just runs too strong in her blood.)

Daisy vigilantly watching the chickens through the fence.

Our cats love spending some time at the fence too.  They get bored pretty quickly but they still make their first stop outside by the chicken run...then they go hunt lizards.

Harry watching Live Chicken TV.

Interestingly I have no pictures of my Boston Terrier Piggy watching the chickens...because she couldn't care less about them.  We were most worried about how she might be around the chickens because she is a notorious cat chaser (but not our cats?), but she looks over at the run and goes about her business, not even the least bit interested.

So the babies continue to grow and feather out and show more and more of their personalities every day.  I am so happy that I finally made the decision to raise chickens again...I cannot express in words how much enjoyment I get out of spending time with these little critters.  I even leave my bedroom window open at night (our bedroom wall is one of the walls to the chicken run) so I can hear them making their little chicken mumbling sounds at night.  I wake each morning to the sound of them emerging from the coop at dawn. I don't know how my husband is going to like the sound of a rooster each morning (if Barry turns out to be a boy), but I know I am going to love it.  I grew up to the sounds of chickens and I hope to spend the rest of my days doing the same.

Keeper of 1 husband, 2 grandkids, 3 dogs,
3 cats, and 17 Chickens!

 

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Chicken Dust Bath ~ If you build it, will they come?

It was my hope that if I built a Dust Bath for my chicks, they would actually use it.  Having baby chicks with no adult chickens to teach them, means I either have to teach them myself or rely on instinct to guide them.  I had to consider this when I decided to create a Dust Bath in one area of the chicken run.  The ground in our chicken run is covered with small granite rocks.  I figure that eventually the full-grown chickens will have the rocks turned under in the dirt, but until then it is about 1-2" deep in rocks all over the run, leaving no clear area for dust bathing.  I decided to use a cat litter box, one with the lip at the top in hopes it would keep some of the dirt inside.  I marked the outside edge of the cat box and dug a hole in the ground the depth of the box, leaving the lipped edge above ground.

I filled the new dust bath with a 50/50 mix of dusty super-soil left over from my raised bed garden and sand I got out of the wash down the road.  I added some DE (after lots of debate over the pro's and con's of using DE around the chickens).  I used the litter scooper to remove any small chunks of stuff that might be still in the dirt.  To me it looked like the perfect little dust bath...now I just hoped they would actually use it. I've heard from other chicken keepers how they went through the trouble of making a special place for a dust bath and the chickens wouldn't use it because they liked a spot under a bush much better.


But two days later...

Isn't that so Cool?!?!  I was just sitting in the run watching the chickens scratch around for bugs and what-not, then one of the Rhode Island Reds wondered into the dust bath box and took a bath!  As you can see in the video, all the other chicks followed her lead and they all took their first dust bath.  Just like human babies, they became all tuckered out after taking their bath so they took a nap...right in the bath!

Sleeping babes after their first Dust Bath!

Keeper of 1 husband, 2 grandkids, 3 dogs,
3 cats, and 17 Chickens!

 

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We've Got Our New Chicks!

Now that my coop and run have finally been built it's time to bring home some Chickens!  I had planned on getting young chickens, at least old enough to go straight to their coop without needing a heat lamp.  I have only heard bad things about heat lamps and coop fires so I wanted to completely avoid that stage.

I knew what breed of birds I was interested in and did some internet searching to find that there is quite a lot of backyard chicken keeping activity going on here in Arizona.  I am also part of an online chicken forum (or two) that has sub-groups for Arizona Chicken keepers within Phoenix and the surrounding communities, so I figured I wouldn't have much trouble finding the breeds I wanted locally.  I was right.  I found a lady that had most of the breeds that wanted, the only problem was that they were only 3-1/2 weeks old.  However, because she lives in Phoenix, where it's already breaking 100 degrees, the chicks were already living outdoors.  The nighttime temps in Phoenix were in the 70's.  Our nighttime temps were still dipping down into the 50's but I figured I could keep the windows and doors on the coop closed in the daytime to build up a good warm temp for nighttime inside the coop.   So I took the chicks home.

We got 2 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Barred Rocks, and 2 Black Australorps.  We hoped they were all females, but she said I could bring back any Roo's that we discovered later.  She was 90% sure they were all female.  So we packed them up in our dog crate for the drive home.  A few of them were small enough to easily walk through the 1-1/2" wide wires...I had not planned to get chicks this small remember.  Once during the trip I thought I heard a couple of babies peeping a little closer than the dog crate, and sure enough the smaller ones had wondered out and were in a bit of a panic.  I put them back in and we continued on home for the 1-1/2 hour drive.

It was just beginning to get dark as we arrived home.  I read that it is best to introduce chickens to their new home at night so I thought this would be perfect.  I placed the entire dog crate inside the coop and opened the door.  They wondered out to check things out but quickly returned to the crate.  To make sure it was warm enough in the coop I placed my digital outdoor thermostat inside the coop, then placed the indoor portion with the digital display in my bedroom.  The chicken coop is outside our bedroom window so I could hear the chicks if anything happened.  I was as nervous as a new mom bringing her baby home from the hospital.

 I stayed up for hours watching the temperature drop in the coop.  It had suddenly turned cold today and I didn't want to freeze my babies out their first night in their new home.  So the hubby and I reluctantly went out to the coop in the dark with only a flashlight to see and hooked up the heat lamp that a friend had given us 'just in case."  Once we had the lamp securely attached to the rafters, safely away from anything flammable, we went back to bed, at least not worrying about the cold temperatures.  Now we just worried it would get too warm or catch on fire.  We didn't have any experience with heat lamps and really didn't know how much heat they might produce in the coop.

But sleep finally came.  Throughout the night the temperature stayed sufficiently warm for the babies but not enough to burn anything.  I woke up very early to the sound of the babies peeping inside the coop and the slight hint of the sunrise coming in our window.  We made it through our first night as new chicken parents.   I quietly got out of bed and made myself a cup of coffee, then went out to the chicken run to do what I have wanted to do for some time now -watch chickens!  They were so entertaining.  I didn't realize how much I truly missed watching chickens until now.  Even at this young age I could already see some of their little personalities showing.

Today is going to be a very busy day for me because I have to assemble and install my watering system and build a feeder.  I didn't want the chicks pooping and spilling their food and water dishes so I didn't even buy any of the traditional food or water containers.   I hope you will come back again soon to learn about the Chicken Fountain watering system and the PVC Feed dispenser that I built...those two posts will be coming up next!

Keeper of 1 husband, 2 grandkids, 3 dogs,
3 cats, and 17 Chickens!

 

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