Here they are, finally! These pictures were taken June 13th. Which is now 5 days ago so they have changed a lot. But I'm getting tired of taking pictures in the coop so I may wait until they are released in the run to take more. I hope we get it done soon.

I haven't forgotten

I have chick pictures from 3 days ago that I have yet to post (and of course the chicks have changed so much since then). My daughter has dance camp this week and that means I have to get up early every day. I'm not a morning person. So this makes me too tired to do anything at night, which is when I have time to blog. Tomorrow is the last day of dance camp so I will hopefully get the pictures resized and loaded and posted tomorrow night or Saturday night.

Video at 2 weeks

Here's another video of our chicks-they are 2 weeks old in this video. Check out the little play fight at about 44 seconds. Cute!!

2 weeks old!

We made it to two weeks! Here are a few pictures I took on the 8th. I also took video-I will post that hopefully tomorrow. There is a lot of wing flapping and even a little bit of play fighting in it (I hope it was play fighting). So be sure to check that out when I get it posted. In the meantime here are the pictures.

Chicken heater

Saturday night our power went out at about 1 am. Since it was pretty cool out, I was worried about the chicks. At only 10 days old, they still needed heat. As we waited and waited for the power to come back on, it got cooler and cooler and I got more and more concerned. So I decided to rig up the most pathetic chick heater. I took a thermacare heatwrap (the kind for your back) and taped it to the side of a small cardboard box. Then I wondered if they would peck the heck out of it and get to the stuff inside (I have no idea what is in there) or if they would lie against it and get cooked. So I needed to cover it with something. I found a sheet that had a rip in it that I was saving just for something like this. I put the box on the sheet, gathered the sheet up around it, tied it on the top (with another strip of the sheet) and cut the excess. It looked like a bizarre gift for someone who has low standards. We went out and slipped it into the coop and watched as the chicks stared, walked toward it, and pecked at it. That was it. They didn't snuggle up to it. In fact, they didn't even snuggle up to each other even though it was, by this time, below 70 degrees in the coop (for week 2 they are supposed to be around 85 or 90 degrees). We went out a bit later and they still were just walking around (and jumping on top of the heater-nowhere near where the actual heat was) and still not bothered by the chill-which was at a cool 65 by now. The next day our power finally came on around 5 pm so we went 16 hours without power. Clearly we were more stressed out by this than the chicks. Sunday afternoon Jenny took these pictures of them on and around the heat box. And some just sitting around.

We've got them eating out of our hands

Any time a hand goes into the chicken coop, the chicks come a-runnin'. At first they're shy but not for long. This is Jenny's hand feeding the chicks. The weird noise is wind. It's been breezy lately. This video was taken on June 4th. I meant to post it sooner but we had a 16 hour power outage.

Chicks at 9 days

Since it's been a whole 3 days since I took pictures, I thought I better add some more today.

In the first three they're eating out of Jenny's hand (well not in the first one-they were still thinking about it in that one). It's so cute-once one gets brave and takes some, the others come running. I also took video of them eating from her hand and I'll post that tomorrow.

Our chicks are movie stars!

Well, not really. But I did make this 4 minute video of them. I had to take it from the window on the coop because if I go in, they don't really act very cute.

The coop - before and after

My husband isn't really the type to build things like chicken coops, so in order to avoid having to build one (because he knows I'd make him) he went and bought me one. How sweet! I liked the coop but the colors-eh. They were a little dull for my taste. So I repainted it. He helped quite a bit and Jake helped too. Steve also redid the roof. The original one was damaged by some wind and when he went to fix it, he found that they used really cheap shingles so he put a metal roof on it (because we had that on hand, which is also why one half is white and the other half is silver). Here are the before and afters.









And the inside. Please excuse the mess-we have been using the nesting box shelf as a catch-all. Also we took out the original roost because it wasn't higher than the nest boxes, which is a necessity or they will roost on the nests, which is gross.







I love my bright coop.