Having them in the Brooder hasn't been bad, but they are eating machines and they are really good at converting food into poo...and quick! This brooder is fine for 6-10 chicks or ducks, but 25 meat chicken babies...NOPE.
It was so bad that the garage stunk really bad too!
I didn't like the idea of them living in their own waste - which is hard to keep up with btw - so it was time to get them out. Up until Saturday they were extremely active - sparring with one another jumping on the waterer and just being crazy. I keep thinking that maybe we could make a brooder area out of the small room at the end of the parking shed. We'll see, it's just an idea right now. There are too many other things to tackle and the box is fine.
Anyway, in order to make the chicken tractor available the ducks needed to be moved first. The easy part was just letting the Magpie girls out of their enclosure and letting them do what they do. Which really was just foraging and exploring the back yard.
The electric netting was gathered up and carted over to the new area and then it was time to start moving the tractor to the yard. Which was a chore in itself. I am able to pull it - but it is a slow process. The route we were taking to get the tractor back into the yard was the same route we took to get it out of the yard...so down the driveway through the yard in front of the garden and through the field to the side yard past the garden boxes and then finally under the cherry tree.
The good thing is that we won't really have to cart it anywhere else after this batch of chicks are done. We are only planning on one batch of meat birds this year. So, wherever the tractor ends up when it's time to harvest is probably where it will stay until next spring.
So, once the tractor was in place we got the baby meat chickies out of their stinky brooder and out on grass!
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| This was Sunday morning - all is well with the littlest creatures on the farm |
We ended up having to get them a new feeder as they were too big to huddle around the little yellow feeder anymore. Now they can all eat at the same time. Also, they got into this whole being on grass thing down pretty quickly and were scratching and tackling a mole hill in no time flat! Since they are still just under three weeks old we have a heat lamp on in the corner for them and we are using the brooder box as a wind break so they will be somewhat protected at night.
When I woke up on Sunday I was concerned about them, so I went out to look at them early in the morning and they were doing pretty well. Happy Happy! So, I don't need to worry about them too much.
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| The Twenty-Five will fill this tractor out in now time! |
What we have observed so far. Freedom Rangers are extremely active! They have been jumping the two feet to the top part of the frame - crazy - and have been able to maintain some sort of balance for about two seconds...if that long. They have been stretching their wings...A LOT! "Flying" from mid-tractor to the door. Their aim is okay, but the landing is pretty rough. They like to jump on top of the bin that we put in with them as a little shelter and then taking kamikaze dives off of it to the ground. Since they enjoy jumping so much I decided that they could have the perch that Tom made for the Javas. The FRs figured that thing out in like a minute. It took the Javas a day or two. The other thing that has been constant is the sparring between what I'm guessing are males. Not sure how many there might be, but a good rule of thumb for straight run chicks is ten percent...maybe a few more. I guess we'll see in a few weeks.
Seriously, these littles have been a lot of fun to watch and I am looking forward to seeing how they progress over the next few weeks. Trying to take photos and post them on Instagram so I will have a good record of their growth and progress during the time that they are with us.
Farm Life is the Best Life!
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