Dolavim.us

We’ve made it one week. Today the birds are starting to establish a pecking order: pecks on the head and standing tall posturing in front of each other. One took a hopping flight across the box and pulled its feet up under it and landed on its butt, bounced, then stopped and looked around with a WTF? sort of look on its face. They’re pretty funny to watch!

More attempted roosting on the feeder. More wing flapping and even semi-coordinated jumping and flapping that sends them in the direction they appear to intend to go, albeit with the occasional veering to the side into another bird or the box wall.

This picture gives an idea of their wingspan now. On Saturday they didn’t really have but the littlest stubs of arms.

The birds are starting to try to fly. They have spurts of energy where they run and flap and really get moving.

As every day, there’s a bit more feather and less down. Their feet seem suddenly bigger.

They’re starting sit on the feeder sometimes as if it were a perch. I think I might make a small perch for them even though they’re clearly not quite coordinated enough to get up on it or stay on it. Given the option though, if they get to where they can sit there, I’m thinking that’ll keep the feed cleaner. Diapers clearly aren’t an viable option and I’m guessing you can’t litter train these critters.

The Rhode Island Red is starting to seem like the leader. The others are tending to bed down, eat, drink or just run somewhere to look at something a bit after she chooses to.

I put the water bottle on a piece of 3/4 inch thick board to lift it up off the pine shavings and it’s stayed much, much cleaner through the day.

Main thing about the birds today: they’re getting messy. They’re all about eating and pooping and kicking the pine shavings around. The first day we needed to clean their water once a day. Now it’s definitely every couple hours. And no sooner do you clean something, they’ve pooped on it. Where are chicken diapers? I guess those would need changed every three minutes. But nevertheless, it’s easier than having a litter of puppies or cats.

Today was a routine day for the chicks. It’s amazing the rate at which they’re growing. They’re eating and pooping more. They are stretching their legs and arms and necks, which are all notably larger. Their wings are increasingly covered by regular feathers already. Tonight they’re starting to show loose tail down and a wee bit of normal feather tail peaking out, especially when the stretch and point their tail out.

There are couple notable changes in behavior today. The little chickies are acting more like hens, scratching the ground, pecking the ground and starting to assert and peck each other even a little. And on occasion they’re sitting like a hen, as opposed to falling asleep and slow motion falling over forwards onto their faces and sleeping with their arms splayed out at their sides. They’re also preening themselves a lot, which makes sense given the extent to which their subbing out the down for feather.

The Rhode Island Red took a nap in Jenn’s lap.

Day two with the chickens has been pretty straight forward. They like to mess their water up. They’re eating, drinking, sleeping, running around like spazzes and then falling over on their faces asleep. Ms. Brahma got pasted-up and I got to learn how to address that…hopefully I did the right thing.

I got to thinking about getting a few egg layers a couple years back. Then this fall my neighbor asked if I’d be interested in going together on some birds. We’ve done a lot of reading and researching the last few months. Today we went by the Urban Farm Store on Belmont to get the things for a brooder, thinking later in the week/month we’d actually get chicks when a new order came in. Turns out they had a secret delivery this week. So now we have 6-8 weeks to get the coop built and in the meantime these eight wee chicks seem to be happy in our simple brooder. We’ve got two Ameraucanas, and one each of Maran Cuckoo, Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, Brahma Light, Welsummer, and Buff Orpington. And are hoping they’re actually all 8 misses…