Moving day

The chicks have finally outgrown their growing pens. Last week we got them moved into their new coop. Farmer John and his mom had cleaned it up several weeks ago. The new coop is in the upper building and will be where the chicks stay until they are full-grown. Eventually we'll move them to be with all the other chickens. 

The next trick was how to move the gals. Farmer John just ended up grabbing them out of the pens and putting them in a milk crate. (We use milk crates for everything around here!) The basket on top is just to cover them for the short trip from the shop to the upper building. 

We got about 4-5 chicks in each load, and only had one escapee. They were not so happy about being grabbed and put in a milk crate, but settled down as soon as we started to carry them across the yard. 

Once they made it to the coop, it was pretty exciting. There was a lot of running around, wing flapping, and scratching. They also walked around really awkwardly. My guess is that their feet were used to being on wire, and now were on a flat surface. 

I don't have any photos of it, but we added some pine shavings as a bedding for them. They then decided to kick it all around and fill up their water with shavings. Farmer John had to hang the water, and this solved the problem. 

After two days in the new coop, we found one dead chick. It was missing a leg, which points to a predator. So, this is not the most secure set-up, but we haven't lost anymore chicks in the past week. We hope the chicks will be happy and healthy in this temporary coop until they are big enough to join the rest of the flock. 

ps- thanks to our IT guy for fixing my computer all the way from Wisconsin so that I could post this!