Outgrowing the Box

Backyard Poultry

A Unique Flock

Can you believe how this box has filled up since I brought the chicks home a month ago? Yes, it's going to be time to move them outdoors soon! But aren't they all so beautiful? I'd really enjoyed watching their feathers come out over the last several weeks. Starting at this end of the roost, the Buff Orpington on the outside has turned a golden yellow, while beside it the Golden Buff (totally unrelated breed) is streaked with brown and white. The Barred Rock to the right is beginning to show the white speckles of the adult hen, while down at the end, Birchie the Araucana is a beautiful white. Down on the floor underneath the Buff Orpington is another Araucana, Pinecone, with a beautiful display of gold and black feathers. And spread across the floor in front are the Rhode Island Reds with a character of their own. It is truly a unique flock!

Little Reds

Backyard Poultry

Playing Grownup

The little Rhode Island Reds were doing their best to act grown up with their older coop-mates. Above, one little chick is trying to take a dust bath in the wood shavings litter! I'm not sure how effective it was. But if you look closely at the Red standing beside it, you can see the whole wing-full of new feathers coming out. You might be surprised at the amount of black and white on what is supposed to be a red-brown chicken. Well, Rhode Island Reds actually can have stripes of black show up in their wing or tail feathers.

Pinecone and Chickie

The older chicks, like I said, almost became like little mothers for the Rhode Island Reds. In this picture, a Red chick appears to almost snuggle up beside one of the elegant Araucanas, Pinecone.

Raising the Feeder

Backyard Poultry

Lunch Time

As the chicks grew bigger, there were constant changes. Raising the feeder was the first challenge. Having the feeder at floor level worked fine for small chicks, but as they got bigger, they were able to kick large amount of litter into the feeder. This got to be very inconvenient to clean out, as well as wasting food. So I found some small flat rocks and cement blocks to raise the feeder just a few inches off the floor. I also had to remove the hinging top with holes from the feeder (you can see it here) since the chicks' heads were nearly too big to fit into the holes. As you can see, they took full advantage of that fact and shoveled plenty of food out onto the rocks and floor.

Combination

Backyard Poultry

Joining the Roost

Did you spot the newcomer on the roost above? Yes, it's the little brown Rhode Island Red! Finally, it was time to combine the two little flocks of chicks. The Rhode Island Reds had grown big enough that I thought they could hold their own in the older flock. Anyway, they had certainly grown big enough to be very crowded in their little pen. Also, and just as importantly, they had graduated from chick feed to grower feed, and thus could eat the same thing as the larger flock. The chick feed has a higher protein content, needed for the extraordinarily fast growth the chicks experience in the first few weeks of life. At around 3 weeks, they can move to grower feed with a lower protein level. The combination went quite smoothly: the Reds were happy to explore the living quarters they had only been able to see for so long, and the older chicks seemed to take the Reds right in as part of the flock.

Sleepy Time

As you can see, the Reds seemed to fit right in. In fact, they seemed to almost see the older chicks as some sort of surrogate mothers!