Chick Update: Week Three

Is it normal that my baby begs to go play with the chickens at 7 am?  She will even bring us our shoes and try to put them on us, in case we missed what she is hoping to do.

We’ve had our chicks less than two weeks and can almost see their growth from day to day.  Yesterday we doubled the size of their cardboard home, but even their new double wide is clearly not going to cut it very much longer.   Because their major accomplishment this week is starting to smell like full grown chickens, the regular coop is looking better and better.  We’re waiting till their feathers are in and they don’t need the heat lamp anymore.  But we’ll keep them separate them from the older hens for quite some time, until they can hold their own.  Chickens are NOT nice to each other.

The chicks don’t have any interest in the food the kids throw at them but are good sports about the reality of living with preschoolers.  But the kids actually prefer visiting the older hens right now because they can go into their coop and scoop the food out of the feeder.  I will never suffer from mommy guilt that the kids’ allergies are due to their environment being too clean and their little immune systems not having enough to reckon with.