I wish I had a video camera yesterday - the movie would be worth a million bucks.
I stopped at the bait shop and bought a container of live crickets thinking I would try feeding them to my older chicks which are about 16 weeks old and free-range all day - just to see if they would chase and eat the crickets. Well that wasn't much of a show - they just grabbed and swallowed them whole as soon as they hit the ground.
So, I thought, let me see what happens if I put one in the pen with my 5 day old baby buff orps. I tell you I've never laughed so hard. One would grab a cricket and run and the other 3 would be in hot pursuit - they were fumbling - stealing - passing - jumping over each other - tackling - true game of football or as the Brits call it "cricket". I kept dumping more and more in the pen and they did this with each one. At one point each chick had it's own cricket in it's mouth but they were still chasing each other. Not only was the game so funny but I was amazed that those baby chicks would just swallow the crickets whole.
Gotta get some more crickets and have my video camera ready this time.
And for those of you who wonder, yes, I put my day old chicks out in the pen and feed them regular foods and I've never seen anything so happy. They play a similar game at night if you turn the light on in their pen - they chase after, catch and eat, the bugs that come toward the light. Sometimes they're just chasing the bugs' shadows on the back wall of the pen and can't figure out why they can't catch and eat the thing.
And today they got their first watermelon - had a similar game with the seeds and ate every bit of that melon.
I stopped at the bait shop and bought a container of live crickets thinking I would try feeding them to my older chicks which are about 16 weeks old and free-range all day - just to see if they would chase and eat the crickets. Well that wasn't much of a show - they just grabbed and swallowed them whole as soon as they hit the ground.
So, I thought, let me see what happens if I put one in the pen with my 5 day old baby buff orps. I tell you I've never laughed so hard. One would grab a cricket and run and the other 3 would be in hot pursuit - they were fumbling - stealing - passing - jumping over each other - tackling - true game of football or as the Brits call it "cricket". I kept dumping more and more in the pen and they did this with each one. At one point each chick had it's own cricket in it's mouth but they were still chasing each other. Not only was the game so funny but I was amazed that those baby chicks would just swallow the crickets whole.
Gotta get some more crickets and have my video camera ready this time.
And for those of you who wonder, yes, I put my day old chicks out in the pen and feed them regular foods and I've never seen anything so happy. They play a similar game at night if you turn the light on in their pen - they chase after, catch and eat, the bugs that come toward the light. Sometimes they're just chasing the bugs' shadows on the back wall of the pen and can't figure out why they can't catch and eat the thing.
And today they got their first watermelon - had a similar game with the seeds and ate every bit of that melon.
