I’ve spent ages today watching the chicks, they really are very entertaining. When I was about Davies’ age my parents built a dove cote and got four white doves, which quickly became 8 white doves and for a while they had up to 20 at a time. They were very pretty and one summer I spent hours training them to land on me for feeding and tried to nurse one caught by a cat back to health (I failed, he died but it was a good try). The doves didn’t get replaced as they gradually died / left home, my Mum didn’t like the bird poo all over her car and the dove cote got taken down eventually, but I do quite like birds.
I’ve also spent ages today online reading about chickens and educating myself, I’ve joined a forum which looks like it has loads of experts on it so should get any help with anything I can’t find answers for. Now we just wait to see how they fare over the next few weeks and work out whether we have any cockrels or not. We’re moving them to a bigger box tomorrow which should do them until they are ready to go outside (6-8 weeks old -ish) although they may go into the garage before that depending on how noisy / smelly they get in the meantime.
I can’t believe how quickly they grow – from the wet little things that drag themselves out of the eggs all beak and feet it is just hours until they are the cute little chicks you see in pictures. By day 4/5 they are already looking like mini-chickens. They have wing feathers sprouting and sometime in the last 24 hours they all lost their egg tooth, their feet and beaks have grown more and their combs are already starting to show. Load of flapping of their wings and pruning of themselves is going on and they can already fly a teeny bit with a big hop. Their necks seem to have stretched giving them much more of a chicken look.
They all stand up and cheep when one of us approaches them and respond to our voices, particularly mine and will jump into a cupped hand. The cleavage placing was possibly an error as they will scramble up me to get to my chest now, which would be fine if they didn’t peck at my freckles, which doesn’t tickle at all now, it just hurts! Yesterday we only had one yellow one without an egg tooth which we assumed was Freddie, now I can’t tell the difference between the yellow ones again. Feathers (one wing) is still lots smaller than the others but growing and developing just the same and seeming to be pretty feisty – if it gets bullied as they grow we’ll have to seperate them.
From reading about chicks today it seems we were amazingly lucky to hatch at all and certainly to hatch 5 out of 6 of those second lot of eggs. Although we were lots more diligent this time that before we still didn’t adhere to all the scientific rules and tips I’ve been reading about today. I did learn about home made incubators today though, so if we did it again I might be tempted to try that rather than borrow one again or buy one. It would appear we were very lucky not to do any harm to the eggs that hadn’t hatched when we were lifting the incubator lid every few minutes while they started hatching too. 😳
If ever there was a need for another blog it is now……..
Comment by Chris — 22 May 2007 @ 5:44 am
(lol) nah, I’m crap at keeping the ones I do have up to date. I did briefly consider it and bored even myself with the idea!
Comment by Nic — 22 May 2007 @ 9:00 am