I appreciate these posts. I'm a newbie. Just got my little flock of 4 in June. I started googling and asking questions I found this forum. Ive learned so much from posts and answers on BYC. But I got hung up on everybody's "right" answers. I started to get confused on what I should be doing because there was all these different ideas of what works and what doesn't work. I didn't take what Ridgerunner said. I wasn't putting everything into the right perspective. Not realizing I'm reading advice from someone who gets deep snow in the winter, I live in texas. No snow. Someone on this forum reminded me of that (thank you). Ever since I've been happily reading and taking advice that I can fit in my budget and know will work. The fact that newbies like me get all nervous and ask so many questions should bring comfort to the veterans of chicken raising comfort. Comfort in knowing that we newbies don't want to do something that will harm chickens. We didn't bring them to our home just for the egg. We want to care for them, love them and learn. So I offer my thanks to all you experienced peep keepers for sharing your successes and failures with us. Everything I'm doing for my peeps I got from this forum.