Well, it's Mother's Day weekend, it's May, and I am woefully neglectful of this blog. Stuff's happening!
I finally, finally, finally got my baby chicks.
I ordered 15 females, three of five different breeds. Cackle Hatchery sent four of each. Twenty! What do I do with all those eggs!? One little Speckled Sussex didn't make it, but the rest are fine.
Oh, the fluffy sweetness was overwhelming that first week. They spent three nights in the house, and that time was great, because they were handy to go visit and watch. But. The. DOG!!! We're still not sure if she suffered under a denied prey drive or a denied mothering/guarding instinct, but either way, we couldn't take it anymore and moved the chicks to the coop where she could no longer hear them. She must have lost five pounds in those few days to the panting, pacing, and whining. Tough week for the Gypsy girl.
So the chicks will be three weeks old Monday the 9th...and they're flying! I mean; "I want to go over THERE!" and they fly over. They fly up to my lap sitting on a chair, and they would fly to my shoulder, but I draw the line at poop on my shoulders or head. I have a first person understanding of what a Pirate's back must look like if he really totes a Parrot around all day on his shoulder. Birds poop. A lot.
Maybe half of them or more are tame enough to hang out "on me" when I sit on the floor. And maybe a quarter are so tame they'll come running, or climb the ladders to get to me. Silly, tiny raptors. Feathering out soooo fast--they'll likely be off the heat entirely in another week or so. I made them a heating pad "cave" or Mama Heating Pad, and they have the entire 8 x 10 coop to rampage through.
I still have some finishing to do on the run. We fenced off a separate pen so that future littles can integrate with bigs and get to know one another without risk of bullying. They have their own pop door and ramp. So I still need to affix hardware cloth at the ends of the roosts to foil the reaching-through kinds of predators, and string cables and netting to deter flying-in predators. We're finally having good weather so I hope to get that done this weekend.
I hope to be more regular about posting here, and soon I'll have dolls stuff to post about. But right now, it's all chickens, all the time. Ha!
See y'all around. Here are some pictures of the coop and run. Cheers!
