SUN UP
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| Everybody made it through the first night |
The baby chicks were quiet during the night, not a peep out of them.
It's morning and as soon as we installed the heat lamp and turned it on the gang streaked out from under Mama Hen like a hockey team hitting the ice. They ravaged the food dish and gulped water hurriedly.
Little tiny birds with big attitudes!
We had planned to shoot glamour shots this afternoon but there is a cool wind blowing outside (which feels fantastic to us) and it's a bit chilly for baby birds with no feathers. We've rescheduled their photo shoot for tomorrow.
WORMS
Mary has finally found wildlife that likes dried mealworms. We originally stocked them for the lizards as treats but we've not had many of them lately due to cool weather.
Our little chick named "Trouble" is true to his name, racing around the brooder-world grabbing every worm he can. He is not averse to just grabbing a worm out of the beak of one of his siblings. We are now predicting Trouble is a male :-)
FLOCK BEHAVIOUR
It is rare that all the chicks are not together physically. They like being with each other. If one starts scratching around in a corner then they all want to participate and see what is going on. If one or two birds start drinking then they all flock to the food and water area. Overall they seemed very animated on their second day at P2, all healthy and happy.
SHUING THEM TO BED UNDER MAMA
Just like kids who don't want to go to bed at bedtime, the baby chicks don't want the day to end. They were out playing all day and rarely did one visit or spend any time under the Mama Hen heater. Mary tried to get the chicks to go under Mama so we could turn off the heat lamp (around 7:30pm) but the chicks refused. Mark turned off the heat lamp and used an assertive push to send the babies into their little bedroom. With no heat lamp to warm them the little chicks gladly went under Mama Hen heater. Within seconds peeping stopped, you could almost hear them snoring, they went to sleep so fast.
HEN HOUSE IN SCREENED-IN PORCH
Today we rearranged things on the screened-in porch and brought the chicken coop in to finish assembly which consisted of snapping the roof assembly to the side walls. By far this was the most difficult phase of assembling the Snap-Lock plastic chicken coop.
We are going to migrate the baby chicks to their chicken coop after they have lived here for two weeks. This will give them extra time to become acclimated to their home before they are set off free ranging. The coop will also give them more to explore, they can try out the perches, explore the nesting boxes and roam around the spaciousness, it will seem huge to baby chicks. It will start to get cramped when the little babies become adults.
SIGNS OF GROWTH
The chicks have only been here for about 36 hours but there are already signs of them growing. Their little wings have pin-feathers sprouting from the ends, these pin feathers were visually longer on most of the babies this afternoon.
