The chicks spent the day outside today. We put the small Electric Hen (EH) in the back of the Go, but they didn't use it. I tried them with a small amount of iceberg lettuce. They ran around with bit os it for a while, others gave chase, but I didn't see much evidence of Iceberg being consumed.
Meanwhile, the Big Girls tucked noisily into chunks of water melon.
Cleaned out the "brooder" floor in the shed, and moved the chicks back in for the evening. Moved the outside run to new grass, raked and sprayed today's grass.
Tomorrow I'll be introducing DH's chick-friendly cube ladder into the run, with a view to introducing the Cube maybe at the weekend. Once the Cube is on, it'll be marginally easier to move the run around... mainly because we'll be able to remove the Go (currently it is too big to go in through any of the doors, wso we have to lift the 3m of run right up to get it out and moved). Looking back through my notes from last year, I see that we kept the Go available (outside the Cube run, within their netted area) as a bit of an unheated rest-area. Maybe I'll do that this year when we let the chicks out o fthe safety of the cube run. There is less pressure to do so this year because the run is so big anyway (and will be 2m x 1m bigger still when the Cube goes on!).
Hard to believe they are 4 weeks old tomorrow (and Friday). If these were supermarket chickens, they'd be half way through their lives already, and they'd be enormous.
Meanwhile, the Big Girls tucked noisily into chunks of water melon.
Cleaned out the "brooder" floor in the shed, and moved the chicks back in for the evening. Moved the outside run to new grass, raked and sprayed today's grass.
Tomorrow I'll be introducing DH's chick-friendly cube ladder into the run, with a view to introducing the Cube maybe at the weekend. Once the Cube is on, it'll be marginally easier to move the run around... mainly because we'll be able to remove the Go (currently it is too big to go in through any of the doors, wso we have to lift the 3m of run right up to get it out and moved). Looking back through my notes from last year, I see that we kept the Go available (outside the Cube run, within their netted area) as a bit of an unheated rest-area. Maybe I'll do that this year when we let the chicks out o fthe safety of the cube run. There is less pressure to do so this year because the run is so big anyway (and will be 2m x 1m bigger still when the Cube goes on!).
Hard to believe they are 4 weeks old tomorrow (and Friday). If these were supermarket chickens, they'd be half way through their lives already, and they'd be enormous.
