A lamp for the chicks

This is a post I meant to write a while ago but all the Halloween stuff kind of pushed it to the wayside.

    Anyway, not long after we put the 'Surprise Chicks' into the brooder pen we got a cold front. We got nervous about them, but there were too many and too large to move back in the house so we put a heat lamp in there. It attracted a lot of bugs. And after the two nights we were able to leave the lamp off.

 




   I was worried that having a light on them all night would mess up their sleeping habits. I shouldn't have. Thanks to the cooler weather we've been able to sleep with our windows open without sweltering, and I can hear the chicks shuffling around. All night.

 It's been a couple of weeks and sometimes I still get up to check on them; sure that I'm going to find a opossum or a coyote trying to help themselves to a squab dinner. Nope. Just a bunch of teenage chickens looking at me like I'm crazy.
  The first time I thought it was because the moon was close to full and it a very bright night. A few nights later I learned that was not the case. They are even louder on pitch black nights. They bashed into things more and there was a bunch of screaming, like they were being attacked, as sleeping chicks got stepped on by chicks blundering around in the dark.
   What are they doing at night you ask? Eating. Their feeders are empty every morning.      
  Adult chicken might sleep pretty soundly, but teenagers will keep you up at night. And wake you up early as the young roosters try to crow. It sounds like someone being choked, loudly.

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The Chicks

Unsurprisingly the 'Surprise chicks'  out grew their cage. Thanks to a little creative chicken shuffling we were able to put them in the brooder cage. We separated them; putting the ones we think are girls (very little comb growth) to the left and the probable roosters to the right. The photos are in that order too. We have five in the right side and six in the left, and are hoping that some (most) of them were mistakenly placed in the rooster side, while all the ones in the hen side are in the right one. (We can dream can't we?)

There is a cold front coming in soon and we will probably run a light out to them.

This is one of the few chicks that we've named; she is a pure blooded Ameraucana. She looks like a quail. Her name is Charlotte. She's probably going to look like 'Possum when she's grown.

    The mostly white chick to the right is Mira, short for miracle, she was the first one to hatch. She's a Buff Orpington- Ameraucana mix.

I call this one Barn Owl because of her markings.

I put an old rabbit waterer in the hen cage I wasn't sure chicks could learn to use one. Leopard, who has lost her spots, was nice enough to demonstrate that they can while I was taking pictures. 

It was nice to deal with chickens that weren't terrified of cameras.







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Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!