We’re slackers (but work is now better and less busy!) 😉 Our chicks are now almost 12 weeks old, but we did still want to share some of their milestones with you all. Hope you enjoy them!
Week two with the chicks and everyone went pretty pretty well. Two of the Cuckoos had a bit of a slower start having some pasty butts that needed attention. But some warm water and careful plucking got them back on truckin.
Week two marked the end of paper towels and gave them access to real bedding for the first time. They, as is a trend, immediately determined that the bedding might be food. So a few tried it out, which then spawned a pecking frenzy from everyone to try and be the first to strike gold.
It was around this time too we discovered on of our little ladies would do spins anytime she got overly excited. (Spoiler she still does this as an adult when the seed bag comes out! We call them her happy spins!)
A lot of first this week: grit, dust baths, exploration & more!
They gained access to grit. So we ordered rocks from amazon which I’m sure just added to the list of interesting things our poor UPS person delivers to us. And yes, these dinosaur birds need to eat rocks. We got specific chick grit (aka tiny rocks).
These perfectly chick sized rocks will aid in our chicks digestion of non-chick food by grinding together and helping breakdown food into digestible bites. They’ll need a few days access to grit, which they self regulate, before they get to try out any non-chick food in order to ensure they have enough to break it down successfully. Otherwise, many issues can arise from souring food-stuffs hanging out in their crop.
IS THIS ROCKS? IT FEELS LIKE ROCKS?
https://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Peck-Feeds-Supplement-Ducklings/dp/B014RYWRTQ/
They got their first dust bath. Dust bathing is essentially to a chicken’s well-being. It proves them a cool refreshing flop in the dirt and also a layer of dust helps kill off and prevent mites/lice/other-creepy-crawlies. Plus in our experience they just seemed to enjoy it. Most of the “dust” (in our case peat moss) ended up flung in great epic fashion across the coop. But the idea was sound. They mostly preferred to just dust bath in the hemp bedding, so we removed it after a few days
They discovered their world was much bigger after we removed the divider. Full access to the run. Means full time for practice “flights.” Chickens don’t really fly, but more so like “falling with a titch of style.” The chicks enjoyed working up epic speed races around the coop practicing flapping their wings and jumping.
They started scratching behaviors which will continue into adulthood, allowing them to dig up bugs/worms/grossness to eat. This behavior fascinated the dog trainer in me. In dog training (and people training haha) we do what is motivating to us. In the wild chicks watch the adults scratch/peck at the ground and imitate them, even it they can’t actually eat the items they uncover.
Yet here in a brooder where there is no rewarding material or snacks in their bedding and no adults to watch and learn from, nearly all of the chicks minus our black star chick were doing it by the end of the week. My assumption is that there must be something more rewarding about the behavior. Maybe it feels good on their new legs or stretches things that need to be stretched. Maybe it’s genetic learning that instinct tells them to do. #chickennerd
Towards the beginning of week three, we sadly lost one of our cuckoo marans. She was the smallest of the who bunch and we don’t really know what happened to her. She was doing well the night before, but in the AM when we went in to do our morning chores, she was lying just outside the brooder.
Many things could have happened. Maybe the others laid on her while she was asleep. Maybe she was pushed out of the brooder and got too cold. Maybe she had something internally wrong which was prohibiting proper growth and development, lending her to a smaller statue and failure to thrive. Nevertheless, it was very hard on the both of us to lose one of the ladies. We buried her down by the creek and are very sad she didn’t get to live a long, healthy, happy chicken life, but we all hope she enjoyed the time she had.
Despite the loss, the others continued to do well. Growing. Flapping. Eating. Pooping. And just generally making a mess. It’s cool now to start seeing them get their first set of “real” feathers. Each is getting their own unique feather coloring which starting to allow us to distinguish them from one another instead of just all being cute fluff nuggets!
We added into their coop their first perch towards the end of week three. Chickens, naturally sleep in trees, so providing them with a nice slightly rounded perch allows them to fulfill this natural behavior. We headed off to Lowes, spent roughly $8 and constructed this “masterpiece.” Multiple tiers allowed for variations in sleep height and a day/night playground to hop/jump/flap around on.
And they LOVED it. We had a programmed timer routine that turned on their lights at 50% at sunrise, and increased to full 100% brightness 30 minutes later. And a similar sunset routine which dimmed their lights at sunset to 50% and turned them off 30 minutes later. This helps the chicks get into a solid night of sleep and begin to understand the daily routine. We’d fill up water, grit, and feed every AM/PM and they were set. Every night we’d check on them to ensure they were sleeping well, and they were. Perched on our masterpiece dreaming of wide open fields and buckets of mealworms 🙂