CLEVER chicken

Some of you may know I found one of the 7 week old chicks in my ginormous brooder in the shed not doing well a couple of weeks ago. Fritzie - I'm beginning to think is a pullet, not a cockerel! - is a frizzled Cochin. I put Fritzie into a brooder in the nursery/bathroom and administered PediaLite. And feed, too, of course. Over a couple of days, Fritzie recovered and I just couldn't return him/her to the ginormous brooder with the 27 other chicks. S/he is extremely affectionate.

A couple of days ago, one of the 12 week old Salmon Favorelle cockerels made it quite plain he needed protection and started following me very very closely, standing right at my feet whenever I came to a stop. I've already lost one SF pullet to pecking and bullying, and this little fellow was pecked BALD too. I haven't been able to see the evidence of this because I go work before dawn and get home after dark. I feel just HORRIBLE about it. Anyway, Yul came into the house and was put with Fritzie. He was SO thirsty and very hungry. Gawd, I'm a horrible mom! He had scabs on the back of his neck and head, and even one of his eyelids has a small cut in it.

Fritzie and Yul are now BFFs. It's adorable. Yul tried to snuggle up under Fritzie at first, and s/he didn't care for that behavior. Now they make dust bowls in the brooder litter together and roost next to each other with no space between 'em.

There is no cover on the brooder. There is a cover on a brooder with 3 young bantam chicks, and the brooder with four chicks hatched 1/1 and 1/3/11 does not have a cover. It's quite deep, though. Fritzie has already had free run of the bathroom, but spends most of the time in the bigger brooder in which s/he and Yul are housed. There's a lot of perching on the edge of the brooder and sidling sideways down to perch on the edge of the other brooder without a cover.

This evening I noticed Fritzie was skootching all the way along the brooder edges to get as close to the heat lamp over the baby chicks, and lean sideways under it, spreading one wing. Like sunbathing! Pretty wobbly, though, hanging onto the brooder edge. Fritzie would balance there and then come back to the bigger brooder when the heat lamp got him/her too warm.

So I put a wire grate cover over the top of the baby chicks' brooder and waited.

Sure enough, Fritzie investigated it and found it good. S/he was able to walk across the wire grate cover, get under the heat lamp, and splay out in an artificial sun bath. And then turn over to toast the other side. Then get up and come back to roost next to Yul.

Now, how is that for chicken reasoning power, huh???!?!?