Well Saturday was the big day for "the girls". Terry, with help from our local Missionaries, have been building the doors for the coop and the outdoor chicken run. Yesterday, we prepared TWO watermelon boxes side-by-side in the coop, cut a hole in their original box and put the dog carrier next to the hole for them to climb into and use as a transfer carrier. After a lot of encouragement they were loaded in, the gate was shut and off they went to the boxes in the coop. Once there, we put the dog carrier inside the boxes and had to pretty much dump them out! I think that their thought was "You have me in here now, and I am NOT coming out!".
After looking around dazed and confused, they actually started to explore their new surroundings fairly quickly. Terry made two new perches, one about 8" off the ground and the other about 12" off the ground, complete with a little ramp to walk up to the perch. Very cute! Once inside the coop it started to rain, but they had their heat lamp on and continued to coo and make happy noises, so I think that they will be alright. These quarters will last for another 3 weeks or so, enough time to get the regular roosting poles up, the nesting boxes built and installed and to finish the outdoor run.
Chicken lovers seem to like to name their coops and go with decorating themes, so here are a few names and themes we are considering:
1. The Fluster Cluck House - (pure chaos - anything goes)
2. Fowl Playhouse - (a theater theme)
3. INDY Coop - (a race theme)4. Coop de Villa - (a resort theme)
I will post pictures when available.
The chickens are weighing in at about 1 - 1.5 lbs. and about 10" tall. They love their roosting perches and now have enough space for all of them to get onto a perch at the same time. There still has been no real pecking order observed as they still sleep in "chick piles". What is funny though is they will perch in segregated colors...i.e. white birds together, black birds together, etc. Very interesting to observe.
Still no definite on if we have any "roos", however, one or two are suspicious, as their red head crowns are coming in faster than the rest. We shall see.
So, I will leave you with this thought about committment:
A chicken and a pig were comparing contrabutions to the farmers table. The chicken was quite proud of the beautiful eggs that she provided each week. While this was impressive, the pig could not help but reply that while indeed the hens eggs were a wondeerful gift, his contrabution was a complete sacrafice!
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