ferrousland.com - diary archives
Sunday, August 10, 2003
six chooks - 06:50 PM
we built a chook shed today. well, actually, we started yesterday & we finished it today. we didn't build the whole thing, either. it used to be a kind of horse shelter/stable type thing & we simply enclosed it with chicken wire. even though all we were doing was putting wire around it, it was still quite a task, although i imagine it was still a hell of a lot easier than building one from scratch.
so earlier this afternoon we bought six baby chickens to go in it. they had day old chicks (three days old by today), some that were at the point of lay (about sixteen weeks old, i was told) & some day old chicks from a previous delivery which were now about three weeks old. since the three day old chicks still need to stay under lights we decided on the ones which were about three weeks old. the guy reckons they're fine to stay outside in a chook shed now.
i went to check on them just before, while there was just a tiny bit of daylight left, & they were ready to sleep, all cuddled up together. i figured they might like something to curl up inside, so i took a cardboard box out there with me. i hope they use it. i didn't put anything inside the box, although i wonder if i should have. maybe torn up newspaper or something? they won't be ready to lay for another two months or so, but we'll set up some nesting boxes for them maybe over the next weekend or three so they can settle into them. i imagine they won't want or need the box anymore once they have proper nesting boxes.
mcgarnicle was very good. when we came home with the box he was very interested in them, sniffing & sniffing & cocking his ears at the sounds coming from inside the box. they must have been able to tell he was out there, because they went really quiet & stopped cheeping. we left the box on the floor, still closed up, while we made some lunch for ourselves & gave mcsparn a chance to sniff them some more & get used to them.
once we'd eaten, we opened the box & let him look inside while shroom held onto his collar. he didn't seem to want to chew on them at all, he kept his mouth closed tight the whole time, so we let go of his collar & he sniffed them some more while they tried to run away from his nose. one of them pecked him on the nose & made him jump back. must be a fiesty little chickadee, that one.
once they started to jump out of the box we decided to take them out to their new home rather than have them running around the house out of control. they'd pooed in the box rather a lot of times for such a short trip home from the place we bought them, so shroom thought it better to let them poo outside. very good idea.
we settled them in their little house with food (called chickstarter, hilarious name, i think) & water. we let mcgarnicle in there with them keeping a close eye on him, but he totally ignored them & just wanted to eat their food! silly dog.
they weren't interested in their food at all. they were fighting over the corner of the shed which was full of termites. fresh bugs are obviously a lot tastier than pellets .. if you're a chicken, that is.
i hope they'll be okay out there tonight. they have shelter, they have food, they have water & they have each other, which from what i understand about chooks, should be all they need. they're only babies though, so i guess i'll worry about them anyway. i can see myself waking up early in the morning (which i've been tending to do anyway, these days) & braving the cold to go out & check on them. it has been warming up since we had those mornings of less then zero degrees (centigrade) but it's still quite cool out there.
you can see some pics of the chooks in the photolog here.
Cool!
Regarding their place to sleep: as far as I know, they would much rather have a perch than a (nesting) box. They are birds after all, and birds like to sleep high-up. Remember my folks' treehens?
Oh, and tell the Sparn he's a good dog
oooh i can't wait to see them! i hope they are still babyish by the time of the party!
hurry up with the pictures!! and take a picture of my niece while you're at it
six! you'll have more eggs than you know what to do with in a few months
what breed are they, btw?
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ooh, I bet they're cute!
I got two new finches yesterday, female zebras. they hadn't been out of the box for even one minute before the two males jumped on them! poor girls