Windy hill chickens - first flock(s) of my own

[Perris]

Love the video, and the chicks are very cute.

Baby Bertha is already scoffing these grower pellets without needing any help to break them up.

I always find it entertaining to watch a teeny tiny chick manipulate a mealworm till it's facing the right way to go down in one, like a seabird with a fish half its body length

 

[kattabelly]

I shut Rognvald & co in the greenhouse for the morning because it's really windy and otherwise they have to roam around getting driven from one day shelter to the next, depending on where the older birds want to be at that moment. It gives Wednesday a chance to rest too, although she's looking much better on that foot now. Came out and found a queue of pissed off pullets wanting to speak to the manager

He's still a baby but you can kind of see the adult Rognvald will grow into here

... aaand back to gangly, awkward teenager mode

His brother was being a dick to all the others a week or two ago, but they're all friends again now

("RIRs don't get along with other breeds" )

I do love the way baby chicks will just randomly appear from anywhere under their mum's feathers

R was intrigued but I think more interested in the meal worms than the babies (he did get some too!)

 

[BDutch]

The laugh is for ‘

wanting to speak to the manager

The rest

 

[kattabelly]

The laugh is for ‘



The rest

They were all stood there in a line the whole time I was inside. Soon as I came out and they realised I wasn't letting them in, they drifted off in separate directions and went back to chickening like they hadn't all just spent ages in a queue for no reason

 

[kattabelly]

14½ weeks old and they've finally started roosting at night. The low, wide planks are a compromise because they still half want to heap sleep.

Stragglers went to roost ss+45 (official sunset time - it disappears behind the hill a while before) and they've been getting up an hour or more before sunrise on the mornings I've been around then, recently.

 

[kattabelly]

"We definitely aren't too full of stolen cabbage to fly but you might as well open the gate for us, since you're standing right there..."

 

[kattabelly]

I taught the chicks to drink from a vertical nipple waterer today and then watched them while their maniac mother went out to stretch her wings and do a circuit of the chicken plot, screaming through the air like a tiny, furious, fluffy dragon. I guess that means we're co-parenting now?

 

[cavemanrich]

I taught the chicks to drink from a vertical nipple waterer today

I know it is going to be COOOOOOOLD very soon. How will you be managing the water out where they are at.??? Assuming no electricity available for heater in water container.

 

[kattabelly]

I know it is going to be COOOOOOOLD very soon. How will you be managing the water out where they are at.??? Assuming no electricity available for heater in water container.

It can feel quite a bit colder with wind chill and the humidity, but it rarely drops far below freezing for very long here. Being surrounded by the sea keeps the temperature more stable - our winter average temperatures are less than ten degrees (18 degrees in °F) lower than summer averages. For most of the time I'm not expecting to need to do more than pour a bit of warm water over any nipples, or holes in gravity waterers, that have iced up overnight. On especially cold days I generally bring them some warm mash, which gets some water into them, and if it's cold enough for snow to settle they can always eat that if there's no other option for a few hours.

The forecast for the next week is 5-10°C (low 40s to 50 F), "feels like" -5 to 9°C (low 20s to high 40s). That's probably slightly milder than usual for December but not completely out of the ordinary.

It's been raining so much that I've only had to refill their waterers once in the last couple of months, so at the moment the biggest battle is trying to stop them drinking from the standing water in a really muddy, poopy high-traffic area of the plot (there's various containers dotted around which collect rainwater and are clean enough that I don't mind them drinking from those). I've switched to turkey grower pellets while I can get them - partly for the slightly higher protein content, since they aren't topping up with many insects etc. while it's this wet, but also because I saw a few worrying poos and the turkey feed contains a coccidiostat.

 

[BDutch]

On especially cold days I generally bring them some warm mash, which gets some water into them, and if it's cold enough for snow to settle they can always eat that if there's no other option for a few hours.

A friend of mine adds a little sirup to the water on the coldest nights. It brings down the freezing point a few degrees C.