Chicks residing at the
Poo Drop' Inn
| They're here! The order arrived from McMurray on 11/10/10. I ordered seven RIR pullets and one RIR roo, 2 EE pullets and fifteen BR pullets, of which I only plan on keeping three. Needed a minimum order of 25 and since I knew I would not be able to identify the RIR roo, I figured to keep it simple to sell the extras. One BR was just about DOA. Another died on day three and one more had to be culled because of a really bad leg problem. |
| I set my brooder up inside of my coop. This is most likely a little larger than most people would use for 25 chicks. Since it's in my coop and they arrived in November, I was concerned about backup heat lighting. That's why there are two lights. Then they needed enough room to get away from the heat. Worked out pretty well. |
| The green stuff is the Grow-gel I got from the hatchery. I also used the electrolytes in the water. They really went after the gel. I initially started off with a one-gallon waterer as recommended by the hatchery. I got nervous about it when they were stepping in the water.
Paper towels were laid down for two days. |
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| The white one is an EE pullet that started crowing at eight weeks. |
| This was my attempt to straighten the BR chick's leg. It did not work. After a few days, she was noticeably smaller than the other chicks. She could move around but not well and the others were picking on her. There was an open wound on the joint that is wrapped up. |
| I had a couple of chicks with pasty butts. This is probably their one and only trip inside my house. I trickled some warm water on the rear ends and that helped remove the gunk. I was careful not to get them wet all over. I patted them dry put some Vaseline on afterwards. Only had to do a few chicks on the fourth through sixth days and I don't think I had any repeats. |
| Out of the Brooder! on 11/20, two days short of two weeks, I had to take the brooder guard down. I was sitting in the coop for a few minutes and saw one of the BRs staring at the top of the cardboard. He they took a determined leap and a few flaps was sitting on the floor outside of the brooder. I decided I could not take a chance that they could get caught outside away from the heat. I ran down to tractor supply and bought a few bags of shavings and filled the coop up. I was initially concerned with them finding the lights but there was no problem with that. Man did they enjoy their new freedom. They ran around the coop like crazy the rest of the day. |
