I am a first time chick owner/raiser. Any help or corrections to my posts are greatly appreciated!!! I have been on a farm my whole life, we've bought adult chickens that have been around, we've raised horses, cows, sheep, dogs, and barn cats....but this is my first experience with baby chickens!
I bought some silkie eggs online. The nice lady sent me some extras, which included two Turken eggs. I let a friend incubate and hatch them for me. The first two weeks they did not get much human interaction b/c my friend has a dog who would love to eat peeps, so they were behind a closed door for their own protection much of the time. When they were two weeks old, I went and picked them up.
They are now 3.5 weeks old. I have them inside the house in a puppy pen that is about 4 feet x 5 feet. I have a light hanging over one corner with a thermometer...it stays about 82 under there and they play and hang out in the whole pen but always sleep under the light. I keep plenty of fresh chick starter and water in there, as well as a little box they can get into or behind (in case the light proved to be too warm was my original thinking but I can now see that they are never too warm LOL). There are four Silkies and two Turkens.
So there's the background. My questions are: first, anything blatantly wrong with my set up (they seem to be thriving but just in case...) and second, how and when do I go about getting them tame? They are scared to death of me. I put them in my office, where I spend all of my time, and as long as I'm sitting still, they carry on and I just watch them while I work. But if I move or speak to them, they run around like a demon is chasing them, trompling each other and peeping at the tops of their voices. I try to occasionally catch one and pet it and hold it close to me, which is fine once it is caught, but they are obviously relieved when I set them down and run off before I decide to change my mind and eat them there on the spot! They just seem so fragile....with a puppy or a foal, I would just handle it until it got used to me, but I wonder if I could literally scare a peep to death!!
Any help is greatly appreciated. I am wondering if I missed a big opportunity those first few weeks??
Jaime
I bought some silkie eggs online. The nice lady sent me some extras, which included two Turken eggs. I let a friend incubate and hatch them for me. The first two weeks they did not get much human interaction b/c my friend has a dog who would love to eat peeps, so they were behind a closed door for their own protection much of the time. When they were two weeks old, I went and picked them up.
They are now 3.5 weeks old. I have them inside the house in a puppy pen that is about 4 feet x 5 feet. I have a light hanging over one corner with a thermometer...it stays about 82 under there and they play and hang out in the whole pen but always sleep under the light. I keep plenty of fresh chick starter and water in there, as well as a little box they can get into or behind (in case the light proved to be too warm was my original thinking but I can now see that they are never too warm LOL). There are four Silkies and two Turkens.
So there's the background. My questions are: first, anything blatantly wrong with my set up (they seem to be thriving but just in case...) and second, how and when do I go about getting them tame? They are scared to death of me. I put them in my office, where I spend all of my time, and as long as I'm sitting still, they carry on and I just watch them while I work. But if I move or speak to them, they run around like a demon is chasing them, trompling each other and peeping at the tops of their voices. I try to occasionally catch one and pet it and hold it close to me, which is fine once it is caught, but they are obviously relieved when I set them down and run off before I decide to change my mind and eat them there on the spot! They just seem so fragile....with a puppy or a foal, I would just handle it until it got used to me, but I wonder if I could literally scare a peep to death!!
Any help is greatly appreciated. I am wondering if I missed a big opportunity those first few weeks??
Jaime
