New Chickens- Tooie

  On the second day of frantic construction on the new coop mom and I got a call from my Aunt. Her step-daughter who also has chickens, needed to find a new home for her three new chickens who were having a bad time with the pecking order. Mom asked if they could wait until the end of the week, because we were out of cages and the older girls are horrible about the pecking order. Plus one of the three was a bantam rooster; Abe would probably kill him. She said she could keep them in an old gerbil cage until then.

   By the weekend it was down to two, (nothing had happened to the other hen) but she started getting along better in the flock and was able to stay. The other two, not so much. So that Saturday my aunt drove up with a pet carrier containing a bantam half-Silkie rooster and a necked neck chicken. More on the necked neck next Thursday, today's blog belongs to the rooster. That's him in the door way, isn't he cute? We named him Tooie short for Cockatoo.

  At first he had trouble getting along with the girls. They were bulling him. Mom only half joked about keeping him in a birdcage in the house. But the girls stopped bothering him so much. So we're leaving him in there. Mom still talks about the bird cage though.

     He's a young boy, he hasn't started crowing yet. But it's only a matter of time. He's not a actual Silkie, he has true feathers, but he does have the extra toe, -weirdly enough it's right under his back toe-  a tuft on his head, blue-ish skin, and feathered legs that are characteristic of Silkies. He is a little fellow, so I'm not sure if he'll be able to father any chicks by the girls, maybe when we move we'll get him some bantam girls.

     He loves grass. Every time I see him eat some I swear he's going to choke, but he somehow manages to swallow the spaghetti like strands. 


  And that is the story of the new chicken coop's rooster.


Note: The USPS is raising the price of stamps on the 26th. I will be raising my cost of shipping then and adding the cost of a tracking number to all my items.   

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