My Cornish X experiment

[duluthralphie]

Sorry I have not written here for a few days. I have been on essential Grandpa duties.

My daughter and her husband both had to work and their baby sitter was on vacation, so diaper duty fell to me. It was great!

Anyways about the CX's, I received a call from my Mother yesterday morning. ( just so this make sense to everyone) We own what is left of the farm I grew up on. We have a measly 13 acres left. It is the homestead and a few acres of pasture. There are 2 homes on the property, My wife and I live in the old house (the one I grew up in) and remodeling it. My Mother lives in the newer home, which they built after I left home so my brothers would have a nicer place to live, ( poor me)......

My mother is 84, but very spry. One of the reasons we moved here was to allow her to continue to live in her home. When I was gone she was "taking care" of my chickens along with my wife.


Anyways back to the call, It goes like this:

Mom: One 0f your little chicks died.

Me: Which ones?

Mom: the white butcher ones in that cage thing you built

Me: Oh, how?

Mom: I have no idea

Me: Did you look at it?

Mom: yes,

Me: Did it have a pasty butt, dried poop on the butt hole? Was the belly full of water? Did you see any wounds?

Mom: Pasty butt? No, its butt was yellow fuzz.

Me: Where is the dead chick now?

Mom: in the garbage truck.

Me: And you have no Idea why it died?

Mom: Not really, it was perfectly healthy and died.but it might have been the one I hit with the net yesterday.

Me: WHAT????

Mom: Yea, I hit one with the net when it dug out of the pen.

Me: How did it dig out of the pen?

Mom: well, they use their feet and scratch and they scratched a hole under the cage thingy.

Me: I understand they can scratch, I always put a board in the areas they are scratching near the edge of the cage.

Mom: Well, I put a 2x4 over the hole now.

Me: Ok. But I need to know why did you hit the chick with the net.

Mom: well I was trying to catch it, and it was running real fast And I could not catch it.

Me: A 3 week old chick can out run you?

Mom: NO, but it was running around the cage and would change directions every time I did. But I saw your net and grabbed it to catch the chick. When I reached for it I hit it instead.

Me: was it hurt?

Mom: I don't think so, but I never looked, I just threw it back in the cage.

Me: thanks Mom, sorry my chick caused you so much trouble....


And that is the official reason I am down to 24 chicks...............
I was hoping to get them out of the tractor today but the weather here is not good for a first day out.

If it gets better this afternoon I may give it a shot.

 

[JacobH]

I was dying laughing reading that conversation. At least you know how it died.

Ours have been in and out this week. We've been doing supervised free range and it's going pretty well. The only real issue has been heat lately. I looked at the high temps for the next week. 99, 99, 99, 100, 101, 100. Miserable. I've been giving them some powerade in their water and they love it. None of them have looked too hot, so that's good.

Tried to upload some photos but the site seems messed up. Our 1 year old daughter has been playing with them outside. She loves to put rocks and grass on their backs and watch them shake it off. It's hilarious.

 

[duluthralphie]

I was dying laughing reading that conversation. At least you know how it died.

Ours have been in and out this week. We've been doing supervised free range and it's going pretty well. The only real issue has been heat lately. I looked at the high temps for the next week. 99, 99, 99, 100, 101, 100. Miserable. I've been giving them some powerade in their water and they love it. None of them have looked too hot, so that's good.

Tried to upload some photos but the site seems messed up. Our 1 year old daughter has been playing with them outside. She loves to put rocks and grass on their backs and watch them shake it off. It's hilarious.

I am glad to hear you say the site is messed up. I thought it was me...

 

[JacobH]

I've seen many in other threads say the same. Hope they fix it up.

 

[duluthralphie]

Another milestone passed today!!

My Chicks are now free range!

I put 3 2x4's under each corner of my tractor raising it about 5 inches, the little chicks can get in and out, the older ones cannot. With one exception, a small hen that worked her way in to get the chicks left over food. Which make no sense because she has the same food in her feeder 50 feet away!

Pictures:
This shows them crawling amongst the "junk: as my wife calls it. It my valuable scrape metal trailer. The chicks are territory belonging to the "scrap metal gang" Thee were a few altercations with some of the gang at the bottom of the pecking order, but as a whole it went well.
The turkey in the background is JJ, he is king of the yard. He is just making sure I comply with all his wishes and desires as I release the babies.


foraging babies, under the trailer.



Baby approaches the sleeping king.



A member of the rap "scrap pile gang" inspects members.

 

[duluthralphie]

More pictures, just cause they are so darn cute!

 

[duluthralphie]

I went to check on the chicks after about 3 hours of Free ranging, I walked around a tree and saw 8-10 dirty chicks lying on their side. They were muddy and not moving, my heart dropped. There was a couple of roosters bear them. DEAD CHICKS ran through my mind.

But alas it was all well. They were just in chick heaven giving themselves sand baths. They look like the happiest mort active chicks I have ever seen. One even flew 3 feet an 3 feet high. It was funny.

I think those advocating free ranging CX's are correct. These are normal happy active chicks and not the slobbish pigs I raised my last batch.

When I put them back I was 3 chicks short. I looked and could not find them. Then they came running out from under thr scrap trailer. They had been lying with the older members of the scrap pile gang!

Life is good for them now..

 

[JessicaThistle]

I went to check on the chicks after about 3 hours of Free ranging, I walked around a tree and saw 8-10 dirty chicks lying on their side. They were muddy and not moving, my heart dropped. There was a couple of roosters bear them. DEAD CHICKS ran through my mind.

But alas it was all well. They were just in chick heaven giving themselves sand baths. They look like the happiest mort active chicks I have ever seen. One even flew 3 feet an 3 feet high. It was funny.

I think those advocating free ranging CX's are correct. These are normal happy active chicks and not the slobbish pigs I raised my last batch.

When I put them back I was 3 chicks short. I looked and could not find them. Then they came running out from under thr scrap trailer. They had been lying with the older members of the scrap pile gang!

Life is good for them now..

I love to hear this as a person that also allows my CXs to free range. I have found them in their dust bath stupor and though they were dead too. I love these little guys.

My CXs are going to be 3 weeks old on Monday. I moved them to the tractor today and will start free ranging them on Sunday. I want them to know where there new home is first.

I do have a funny little story from about a week ago. I had two small boards piled up on top of their wood chips with a small wheel hub on top that I kept their waterer on to reduce wood chips getting kicked in there. I looked into the brooder to see rear ends of 4-5 chicks on three sides of the boards. Every now and again they would stand up, scratch chips out and stick their heads back under the wood. When I shooed them away, I saw that they were tunneling underneath the boards! At any given time there was 10 of them working together to tunnel underneath it. Well of course, if I let that go on, I would have had squished chicks. I had to dig down and pile my boards up from the bottom rather than on top of the wood chips. I don't know what they were looking for but they were all in on it!

 

[duluthralphie]

Jessica, that is so cool and my Mom will be so glad to hear you having tunneling CX's too. I laughed at her when she claimed one of mine tunneled out the tractor.

My chicks went into the tractor at two weeks old. They have been there 8 full days before I let them out.... They seem to know where home is.

 

[JessicaThistle]

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself either! Lol!

I moved my last batch to the chicken tractor and now this one just a few days before 3 weeks old. Luckily I didn't have tunneling out with the last batch, but I will certainly have to keep my eye on these guys! I move my tractor multiple times per day so it doesn't give them alot of time for digging holes though.

Generally after about one day, the chicks easily go back home, especially if you bring food.