putting them out, when can I? (long post)

[SundownWaterfowl]

I moved my chicks outside when they were 4.5 weeks ago. That was 2 weekends ago. I moved them to a small coop with an outside run. There is a heatlamp in the inside. They are totally fine and having fun running around the coop.

 

[firedove]

We would need 200 feet of extension cord to get to the coop and we have no outside outlet so we would have to run it through the back window and take up one of the very few and very used outlets in that back room. It's not impossible but it isn't very practical.

The way my coop is set up I can't really section it off. The nest boxes are on the back wall and two long roosting branches run from front to back on the left hand wall. The only door is on the right hand side of the front wall. To keep my brilliant hens from jumping off the nesting boxes and into the water I have to keep the water just a foot inside the door and the hanging feeder is just left of the door about a foot into the coop. It's amazing how small 8'x8' can look when you start getting stuff like nesting boxes and feeders, etc... in there.

We do plan to have our 12'x12' exercise run attached as soon as the snow and frozen ground allow us to finish building and putting it up (which might be soon with the rate of melt right now

We may be able to section off a 4'x12' part of that but we would still need some kind of shelter for the chickens that go in the smaller section. The ones in the smaller section would probably be our grown hens since there are far more chicks than there are hens and the chicks are going to need more space. Since the separation would just be for a few days, my older girls can deal with a 4'x12' space for a while, being only 9 of them, 2 of those little banties.

However, if the weather goes bad again we won't be able to get the pen up just yet. We have to be able to dig down to put in some buried wire (and we have qwik-crete to create a 6" deep moat as well). It'll be hard enough with all the roots but if it's also frozen we will never get through it. If it snows we are really out of luck for a while.

Once these chicks are in I won't have to worry about integrating large groups ever again and I can just use my dog crate to introduce a small group of chicks. It's just not big enough to put 30 chicks in and food and water too, especially for more than a few hours.

The introduction of this great big group of chicks is just going to be the toughest part.