Chicken Business & Other Ramblings

My chicks out grew the homemade brooder, so I found a large cardboard box to move them into. I think the tub brooder was a good idea...But when you have 9 chicks in it, they outgrow it fast. The extra guys are still in the tub. They are getting a little crowded but I think they'll be OK for another week or so. Willy was suppose to have gotten them this week. His Mother is very ill and he had to make a trip to see her. So, I still have them! It's a bit of a burden, but he's a good friend and I will help him out as much as I can. So for now... they are all still hanging out in my living room! The extra guys are getting in white feathers. Their top combs are growing in. It's amazing how fast chickens grow!

The chickens have wing feathers, tail feathers and are beginning to get back feathers. I can easily tell who is who in my bunch. The Rooster- I call him Rock-A-Doodle--has silver wings and is marked very different than the Wyndotte hens (peeking in at far right bottom of the pic). I can tell each Wyndotte hen is going to look a little different than the other but I have a hard time telling who is who exactly. We've named them Martha, Margo, & Marge (3 darker black ones). The Sicilian Buttercup girls (the 3 with speckled around the eyes) are usually called the Twitchy Sisters. There are 3 of them and they look the same. Twitchy has a head shake she does that resembles a nervous twitch. She is pushy, pecks and doesn't hesitate to step on someone sleeping. She's a bully. I'll have to keep my eye on her. They Silver-Gray Dorkings are the sweetest. They hop into my hand and like to be handled and petted. The "oldest" one is Dorthy(sitting up on wooden block). I say oldest because she has grown more feathers than the rest and is a bit larger than the others. I assume she hatched early. The other Dorking is Dolores (brown with a line behind her eye). She is the baby of the bunch. With the least amount of feathers. She holds her own well though. I'm guessing that because the Dorkings are more of a specialty breed, they had to wait on different hatching's, and that would explain the difference in age.

The coop is almost finished. Sherman still has to get walls and a roof on. It's been so windy he hasn't been able to. The wind today is 40-60 mph. It is crazy out there! It makes it impossible to do anything outside. I'd love to do my laundry but it would blow into the next county!! The most upsetting thing is---you wake up to this gorgeous Spring day and think "Wow, what a great day!" then out of nowhere about mid-morning the wind comes in on a forceful wave and blows on and on. We are suppose to have the kid's Easter parties at school today. They each have a class egg hunt...wonder how that's going to work out?!

I'm going to try to give you a full view of the coop.

This is the front of course! We attached an old screen door we had. The frame to the right is a window. We put in 2 windows to raise for ventilation. It is very important to have good air flow through the coop. To circulate the air to decrease the smell ,but for those hot Texas summer days as well.

This is the side view. I am standing in what will be the chicken run to take this pic. The window is framed at the top and the little door at the bottom is the chicken door that will be open every morning to let the chickens out to the yard. You can see through to the other side--inside the coop is the nesting boxes mounted to the wall. There are 10 boxes -5 on top-5 on bottom. Technically you only need 1 box per 4 hens but Sherman's Dad gave us this and we were glad to have it. There will be a hatch on the opposite wall behind the nest boxes where I can check for eggs without entering the coop. That will be so nice since I have designate boots specifically for the coop I must wear. Chicken poop can carry lots of bacteria so it's a good idea to have a pair of boots just for that job. I'm SO ready for these chickens to move into their new home and out of mine!! I tried to move them to the garage but it is so hard to regulate their temp out there. It's been so cold at night and hot in the day. They aren't ready to fully face the world until 5 weeks so I still have to keep them at a constant temp. I did wean them off the heat lamp. I decreased the temp until I got it 75*. I turned it off a little in the day so they could get use to the sunlight. Then I did the same at night--turned it off for a few hours at night so they could get use to the dark. They seem warm enough and content--They did get a little freaked out about the dark but soon settled down. Today they've gone all day with no lamp and have done fine. I'm going to try to go without it tonight. We'll see--they do seem to get a little more chilled in the night.

These chicks have been fun...but a lot of work! I just keep thinking about how fun it will be to sit out and watch them scratch and peck. I will enjoy feeding them the bugs I find in my garden. I will REALLY enjoy all the tasty eggs they will lay for me. I just keep focused on all these things and it makes the work bearable! One day I'll look back on this crazy time when I got a wild idea to mail-order some chickens!! What a memory it'll be!!