Monday, June 23, 2008

Day 117

Tomorrow the chicks will be 17 weeks old.  In a little over a month we expect to start getting some production out of these birds.  The price of eggs is getting too high, we need some free ones!  I’ll have to get Josh to run some numbers to see how much these eggs are going to actually cost us.  Regardless, it’s nice to know where they come from and having the chickens has been a lot of fun.

Jaden and Avery are keeping a close watch over the hens

Mr. Jingles had a harrowing experince last week…  Josh opens up their house door in the morning when he leaves for work, giving them access to their fenced-in run.  Well, later that morning the dogs got me up to let them out, so I opened the door and hear Avery bark as she runs out.  I turned back to yell at her to come back in and I see Mr. Jingles about five feet in the air with Avery right behind her.  They were on the other side of the yard from where the chicken run is located.  Well, I was not dressed appropriately to run outside (although the neighbors would have had a story to tell for years to come), so I ran back to my room to get covered up and ran back outside only to find Avery staring into the chicken pen.  I wondered if she ate her quickly or if Jingles jumped our fence and was on the lam in the neighborhood.  I looked into the pen and counted six chickens.  She had somehow gotten turned around and back to the other side of the yard and into the pen in about ten seconds.  After a bit of investigation, I found that she escaped by hopping onto the pullet house and then hopping over the fence.  I still don’t know how she got back in.  At any rate the birds all got their wings clipped that night.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Day 107

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted.  The chicks were 15 weeks old on Monday.

There’s not a whole lot new going on with the chickens.  They aren’t growing nearly as rapidly as they had been, but they are still growing.  The won’t be full grown for a few more months.

It’s been really hot here for about a week.  Over the weekend it got up to 100 degrees.  The poor chicks were panting.  I put a fan outside for them and gave them a little tub of water.  I thought maybe they’d get into the tub, but they didn’t want to stand in it.  I put some corn in it to lure them in, but it didn’t work.

Here they are trying to get the corn

Posted by Joshua at 00:42:54 | Permalink | No Comments »