This Week with the Chicks

This Week –

Several Milestones for the Chicks, 

and another Chicken Farm Camp!

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

The chicks continue to grow and develop way too quickly!  By last weekend – at 4 weeks old – several of the more precocious of the flock were repeatedly flying up and perching on the “chick corral.”  If several chicks chose to do this at the same time, the corral would collapse.  That would result in chicks running about outside of the corral and onto the bare cement coop floor, as well as around and through the supplies we still had stored inside the coop for our ease of access. 

Like a mother not wanting to send their child off to kindergarten, I still didn’t feel that the chicks were ready for access to the entire coop – but clearly the chicks felt otherwise.  So on Tuesday afternoon, I bought several more bales of wood shavings – and on Tuesday early evening, Anya and I spread the wood shavings, took the chick corral down, and gave the chicks the run of the full coop.

They are quite enjoying their expanded world!  Some of the chicks almost immediately started perching on the “window sills” and on the adult roosts (but only during the daytime; at night they all still return to the heat and security of the wooden brooder and its heat lamps).

This past week we also held our chicken farm camp for 7-10 year-olds.  With the chick corral removed, the campers were able to enter the coop (in small groups), find a place to sit in the wood shavings, and feed the chicks greens and/or mealworms.  That was a hit with both the campers and the chicks.

The chicks seemed to enjoy the food and the attention – as well as the additional objects upon which to climb!

As I type this, the chicks are 5 weeks old today – and today we started mixing their “chick starter” feed with new “chick grower” feed.  We’ll transition fully to “grower” feed during the next few days. They’ll continue to be fed “grower” feed until they start to lay eggs (at 5 or 6 months of age) – at which time we transition to “layer feed.”  

Our chicks are still chicks, but they won’t be chicks for much longer!