Chickens

Chickens!   Pet Chickens! We got three baby Easter-Egger Chickens (they usually lay blue or green eggs) from the U District Grange in September.  Here is Maeve holding one of the chicks  at 2 weeks, already much grown.  They were in the basement in a large cardboard box for a brooder that we duct-taped together and connected a heat lamp hanging off a chair.  We used an old window-screen as a top. It was too big for our windows because they sent us the wrong one so we used it. 

The three chicks in their brooder.  Their names are Green, Flappy, and No name (ie not named yet).

Their foot and water set up, on plastic plates.  They made a mess.  We later put these plates up on bricks to try to keep it a bit cleaner.  When they were older, they knocked over the food every day.

Here are the chicks at 4 weeks, much bigger.  They aren't actually red it's the light from the heat lamp.  They are brown, black and tan. 

Maeve worked very hard to play with the chicks every day and hold them so they get habituated to people and will let us hold them when they're bigger.  They didn't like it at first, but now they are fine with it. 

Here is the big day, 8 weeks old and out in their coop in the yard.  We spent the day putting hardware cloth under the coop, digging out the space, and placing the coop on bricks.  All in the name of predator protection (in our environment, this means raccoons).  This was last weekend, and this weekend they'll get their first free-range time. Hurray!  They look totally different from when they were chicks.