More chicks hatching means the older hatches get shuffled along to larger quarters. Each hatch starts out inside in a playpen with a large heat plate. After a week or two, they go outside to an insulated heated brooder for two weeks. Then it is on to a closed coop with a heating pad, with daytime access to an outside pen. At six weeks, they can keep themselves warm, and they move to an unheated pen in the hen hotel. From there they get sorted, the boys go over the creek to the bachelor pen, the girls go into the Polish and Silkie coop, and most are sold. The Polish and Silkies are my kindest birds, and I know the little ones are safe there.
Two Silkie hens are raising broods, and their chicks are about the same age as a batch of six week olds I moved in on Sunday. Tonight I noticed those two moms are letting all the new chicks sleep in their shared nest. Interesting, usually mother hens chase other chicks away. Silkies are such great moms!

The chicks who stay on the farm eventually join one of three flocks, and last week, five 7 week old hatchmates moved to the Polish flock. All girls this time, three bantam Rhode Island reds from Quebec eggs, a farm bred Polish and a Sumatra X Polish.

I have found that seven or eight weeks is a good age for chicks to join a flock, they’re too young to disrupt the pecking order, but old enough to look after themselves pretty well. Moving is stressful, so I always make sure they have at least one buddy.

I think the Polish chick is going to make an awesome mama some day. Look at her with her wing around the little Rhodey on the end. She does this every night, what a good big sister.

Five years ago, when the breeder dropped off six day-old fuzzy butts, and I installed them in a guinea pig cage sitting on a large blue tarp in the basement, I would never have predicted it. I was only in it for the eggs and maybe a chicken dinner.

The tarp was unnecessary as it turned out, but chickens have become a necessary part of my life. Intelligent creatures with diverse personalities and a complex social structure, chickens are quite entertaining to have around.

My wholly-unscientific theory is that chickens are interesting because they are highly evolved beings. Within the limitations of their physical selves, they  have reached an advanced state. After all, they have been around for a very long time. Chickens are the closest living relative to T. Rex.

My husband jokes that it’s a good thing I didn’t get chickens while our kids were little, the kids would have had to raise themselves. Mom would have been out with the chickens.

Now that the preorders are filled and next year’s hens started, it’s time to have fun with new breeds and lines.

Cream Legbars, Blue Laced Red Wyandottes and a rainbow of Silkies popped out this week, and some olive eggers are hatching as I write.

Both the olive eggers and the Legbars are sexable at hatch, which is nice for those who can’t have roosters (aka most people). We’ll sell the olive eggers, but keep the four little Legbar pullets, because their eggs will be next year’s olive eggers.

One incubator has been mothballed, and the second will be offline soon. Pullets hatched next month just might wait till spring to lay, and that’s a long time to feed an unproductive bird.

Lots of drama in the coop at dusk today, a chick-cacophony of eighteen confused youngsters yelling and crying. If they had been people, someone would have called Social Services.

Alsty was trying to convince the kids that roosting with the laying flock was better than nesting in the brooder pen. Some of them bought it, others did not.

I left them to sort out their issues, and checked in again at dark. Half of the babies had made it up on the roost with Mama, but the other half had piled into a tearful little lump in the corner of the brooder pen.

That wasn’t going to work. They’d get too chilled in the night, I had to bring Alsty to them. Several trips up and down the step stool later, grabbing babies and carrying them to the pen, I got the last chick and Mama in and locked the door.

I hope I won’t be doing this every night for the next little while; but you know I will be.

Yesterday, for the first time since hatch two weeks ago, I opened our Alsterier’s brooding cage door. Alsty and her 18 fast-growing chicks lost no time in exiting into the large roofed run.

I was concerned about hawks and ravens, there have been a few hanging around, and the chicks are small enough to swoop and scoop.

But I didn’t need to worry, Alsty had safety top-of-mind. She let the kids explore, and everyone had a nice dust bath, but she didn’t let them put one toe outside the run.

Today she took them out, leading a 15 minute loop around the field, then it was back to the run for another lazy afternoon. It is fascinating to watch her control her babies with just her voice, they react instantly to her verbal cues.

I guess obedience is bred in, a poor listener wouldn’t last very long.