They Went Inside!

[NatJ]

I'm not willing to deal with the mess and potential mold of feeding wet food in the summer heat. I gave my in-town chickens warm scratch-grain porridge on cold winter mornings, but don't care for the extra work preparing it and washing dishes for them routinely.

I have never had trouble with mold--just keep the quantity small enough they gobble it down.
For that many chickens, I might dump a quarter cup or less of feed into a dish, add water to cover, and carry it out to them. The water soaks in, they gobble it up. They pick the dish so clean I don't always bother washing it afterward.

I hate scrubbing dishes, so I tend to use disposable ones for chicken treats: sour-cream containers or even the lids from them, the cut-off bottom of a milk jug or juice container, the plastic tub lunchmeat comes in, little single-serve cups from hummus or applesauce or salsa or something, and so forth. I re-use them as long as they are fairly clean, or as long as a simple rinse with water makes them look clean. When that's not good enough, I throw the container in the trash and use another one.

For me, it's very little work, and no worry at all about mold. No way to grow mold in less than 15 minutes!

 

[Gallinarium]

My twelve week olds have no problem knowing it's time to go in when it gets dark. It's where that's the problem. I found Rachel, my brown Leghorn, up a tree. And Argenti, my littlest chick, was found perched happily on an umbrella in the garage.

 

[Sonya9]

It is easier to train them when they are younger (i.e. first week) but often starting with your hand near a dish of food they are eating is the first step, when they get comfortable with that you start putting the food in your hand.
Giving them a dish of food at bedtime once they are already in the coop will get them into the idea, soon when they see you arriving with the dish they will rush to get it. Currently my 8 week olds get plain quaker oats with a bit of water on it at bedtime (quaker oats are precooked), course the "idea" of a treat is more important to them than the type of treat.

 

[thepick4uchicks]

I remember how exciting this was for us too! Lol!

I tried splitting my flock of nine nine week old chicks for a week into a few separate kennel brooder type pens in my basement to keep them cooler until their new outside permanent home got finished and that was a Terrible idea. They made such a big fuss at me about that ordeal and upsetting their pecking order that I thought they were. Going to have a hissy fit and give me a flogging over it. I found out real quick they would rather be really cooped up in every sense of the word than separated from each other one bit in division for simply comfort or space. They weren’t a foot apart. The smallest group stopped drinking and eating as good as normal. Crazy.

 

[thepick4uchicks]

It is easier to train them when they are younger (i.e. first week) but often starting with your hand near a dish of food they are eating is the first step, when they get comfortable with that you start putting the food in your hand.
Giving them a dish of food at bedtime once they are already in the coop will get them into the idea, soon when they see you arriving with the dish they will rush to get it. Currently my 8 week olds get plain quaker oats with a bit of water on it at bedtime (quaker oats are precooked), course the "idea" of a treat is more important to them than the type of treat.

Exactly. My flock takes all new treats from my hand first. They will not eat anything new off of a dish without eating it first out of Mama’s hand. Yes I am the Mother Hen to them for real.

 

[Sonya9]

Exactly. My flock takes all new treats from my hand first. They will not eat anything new off of a dish without eating it first out of Mama’s hand. Yes I am the Mother Hen to them for real.

The 8 week olds were raised by a broody and that is exactly what they did! If I brought them a dish of "different" food when they were younger they wanted to try it so bad but would wait, their little eyes going back and forth from the dish to their mom until she said it was okay. The moment she gave the okay they dived right in.

Broody raised chicks are usually wild and difficult to impossible to tame but I handled the chicks the day they hatched and every day since, it really paid off as these chicks are the tamest I have ever had.

 

[3KillerBs]

Unfortunately, my chicks are not tame at all. They regard my hands as terrifying monsters and the only think that will get them close is a clump of sourgrass (aka Wood Sorrel). They'll eat it as long as I hold it perfectly still but if I try to approach with my other hand they run.

In the future I will either have a brooder I can walk into or one that I can reach the back wall -- they learned early on that they *could* hide from my hands so I was unable to get them accustomed to being handled.

 

[Sonya9]

Unfortunately, my chicks are not tame at all. They regard my hands as terrifying monsters and the only think that will get them close is a clump of sourgrass (aka Wood Sorrel). They'll eat it as long as I hold it perfectly still but if I try to approach with my other hand they run.

In the future I will either have a brooder I can walk into or one that I can reach the back wall -- they learned early on that they *could* hide from my hands so I was unable to get them accustomed to being handled.

They often calm down and become less frightened when they start laying so things will probably improve.

 

[donddon]

The Brahmas are 7 weeks and the others are 5 weeks.

They don't get to go out alone yet. I give them supervised outside time for an hour or so just before dark. It would be different if I had a covered, hardened run, but in this setup I don't -- just electric poultry net. It would also be different if I'd found a treat that they like well enough to come to my hands for, but I haven't. (They can take or leave mealworms, mostly leave them).

I use organic unhulled sesame seeds to bribe my chickens. They will do anything for them. I get them on ebay, surprisingly inexpensive.

 

[3KillerBs]

Tonight was quite an amusing adventure.

They had a grand time out exploring more of the pen than they had before. One of the Brahmas managed to catch a large bug in mid-air and almost managed to eat it before her sisters tried to steal it.

Then, as it got dim one of the Wyandottes went inside, stood in the window and cried while her sisters continued to forage. She couldn't convince them to come in so she came back out. Then, as it got darker they started to go in, one-by-one, until only the Brahmas were out.

I was rather amused at the thought of the Brahmas, who are 7 weeks old instead of 5 weeks , staying up later than their little sisters -- like teenagers refusing to go to bed. They jumped up on a box and I realized that the tone of their cheeping was changing. They seemed to be really frightened at their situation.

I scooped them up and, for once, the presence of the giant who brings food was comforting. They stopped crying while I held them and carried them to their pop door. First time I've gotten to hold and pet them, but I didn't take advantage of it long since I knew they'd been afraid and needed to get back to their sisters.

The one with the redder comb is Omelet, who is larger, has more black, and is the leader. The other is Dumpling.