The chicks are growing well. The two white ones are feathering well, the blacks are slower. Watching the black chicks today, we were amazed at how different each of them is - I'm going to take photos tomorrow and record the detailed differences so we can see what happens as they grow up.
The weather hasn't been great (apart from the last few days) so they haven't had much time outside yet. They can't be off heat until 6 weeks or so, but if the weather is very warm and not too windy, and as long as the grass is bone dry, we've found it works well letting them have a few minutes outside each day from about 2 weeks. When they are reared by their mum, they get a few
This year, it's been far too cold. We've had warm weather for a few days now. They've had 5 minutes outside yesterday and the day before, while I cleaned out their pen. They also had their first taste of live mealworms. Yum!
Today was very hot. DH made a run up for them, just 1m x 1m, and they we outside for about an hour. They probably wanted to stay out, but we didn't want to push it. We'll give them another half hour to an hour tomorrow, and I might introduce a seed tray for them to use as a dustbath.
We'll probably have to introduce the Cube in a few days, so that they can have 3m x 1m. They are far too small to use the Cube itself, so we'll put an electric hen out on the grass as well.
The Garden Girls have been playing musical roosting bars, a different arrangement of Girls in each Cube each night. No doubt losing a Cube is going to cause a problem: we'll put the Go in its place, temporarily.
Not sure yet which Cube we will use for the Chicks.
