Chicks need help to the coop

[gaa2970]

Chicken TV!

HAHAHA!!! i have SERIOUSLY been thinking about it. I spend way to much time with my birds. lol

 

[gaa2970]

Yesterday I had to run out to the pen 3x to get that ONE chick out of the rain! I had a whole panel covering the front of the coop but I'm going to move the entrance to this side since I can see it from my office. I closed off the other side in the meantime because the Cochin wanted to jump into the water bucket! I know where the term "bird brained" comes from now. lol

 

[LRH97]

Thank you for the encouragement but today was actually a really good day for us!

The Reds are all supposed to be pullets so hopefully I don't have any roosters! My cochins are all pullets from Ideal Poultry. I have an adult barred rock rooster and an adult RIR rooster I'm seriously thinking about making Sunday dinner since I put the chicks outside. THEY DRIVE ME NUTS!! They crow all day long! And I work from home so sometimes customers ask me, "was that a rooster?". Lol
I had two reds that keep flying onto the door which is made out of a wood pallet so i figured they want to roost (the rest still sleep in the corner on the floor) so I put them on the top rung of a roost in the coop and 4 of them ended up staying up there. and two more reds on another rung. All but 5 of the Red chicks made it into the coop on their own (the Cochin all did) and I put the others in before the sun was completely down and they stayed! I was pretty excited about that. lol
My little blond Cochin didn't just get pecked, she had an open wound bigger than a nickel but smaller than a quarter. I'm sure it happened just how you said and they let her have it. I'm going to be more careful now to clean them up as soon as I see any kind of a wound to avoid that from happening again. I'm lucky I work at home cuz i can check on them thought the day and the coop is in a place I can see it from my window. I actually get to watch them all day.

I did dress it because I had a rooster once that had it's neck mauled by a dog but the rooster made it. And I had cleaned the wound and thought the rooster was good until a few days later it's head started drooping and he wouldn't keep it up for long periods of time so I thought I may have missed something. So I checked him out again and the reason he couldn't hold his head up anymore was because fly maggots were literally eating all his meat. We had to put him down.

My little Cochin is in with chicks that are younger than she is so they don't pick on her.

Now my new question is, once they get used to going back to sleep in the coop, how long do I keep that up before I let them free range?
Thank you so much for such an invaluable education. No advise is better than that which has been tried and proven.

Glad to hear things are improving! Let me tell you, you have it good working from home getting to watch them all day. I can't tell you how many times over the years I've came home to a pile of feathers from what was once a chicken. (Darn foxes) Sorry about your roo too. Not the prettiest way to go by any means. As soon as most of them are consistently going into the coop at night, I'd say it's ok to let them out. Chickens are flock birds and tend to follow each other around a lot (they are easily distracted and do go around solo too, though!) so if most of them know to go into the coop, most of the others will probably follow too. Do a complete head count before letting them out and do another before sunset to make sure all of them are accounted for. Make sure you have some daylight left to go and look for any missing birds. Remember it'll be their first time out so they may seem a little confused. They may stay close to the coop for a while, but as soon as they yuck up enough confidence, they'll be all over your yard!