omg!!! All the chicks are napping, after just cycling into the play pen while i clean the brooder. They play until they start to nap, then i put them back so they don't get cold.
All is well and good, except that i am surprised to find a good number of them can flap up to the six inch high roost i placed, running the length of the brooder. huh? They're not a week old. The last group didn't do anything like this sort of thing.
moving and playing created sleepy chicks. i settled in for a few minutes of quiet. They'd nap for awhile. i hadn't been sitting for 15 minutes when panicked peeping comes from the room. WTH? open the gate, half run to me, half lay where they're still too sleepy to worry about it all. okay who, where? Remembering the last time, under the waterer? no, the food dish? no. Beside the little nest box i have in there? no. What the ???
All this time peeeepppp peeep peeeeepppppp! WTH? Check faces, check feet, someone pecked? peeeeeeppppp!!!
Where is this animal?
Finally i realise that one of the chicks has flown high enough, while SMALL enough, to go over the draft barrier that is 2ft high... i back my shoulders out of the brooder and look. knowing which bird this has to be ppppeeeeeeppp!
finally i see him and he sees me and manages to get turned around in the space between the crate and the wall, and heads toward me. The rest of the dialogue is not for an audience including impressionable children or easily offended adults. i did four years in the Army, let's leave it at that...
DHARMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
he is so not going to make it to full grown. Through the crate bars, just an inch apart, at two ft high. Can you hobble a chicken? Danged animal, little freak, part monkey.
i swear my hair is grayer...
Sigh
