10 Weeks and Counting!

Chicks Grow Into Pullets –

and (Sort of) Fly the Coop!

by Sharon Gaughan, PCLF Education Program Director

Our chicks are really not chicks anymore.  At 10 weeks of age, they look like chickens now – albeit small versions of the full-grown hens they will someday be.  I need to get into the habit of calling them “pullets” (defined as female chickens under the age of one year) rather than “chicks” – but old habits die hard.  Besides, I always liked the alliteration of going out to the hen house to do a “chick check.”  Somehow, doing a “pullet check” doesn’t sound quite as appealing.

Last Friday afternoon, we opened the pop doors (the two small chicken-sized doors) to the chicken yard for the first time.  Not yet ready to give the chicks (oops! I mean, the pullets!) full freedom of the entire chicken yard, we fenced off the small area just outside the pop doors – then Anya sat inside with one of my cameras, and I sat outside with the other.  We wanted to document their first steps to the outside world. 

We waited, and we waited, and we waited.  The chicks… the pullets were very interested in the outside world – but they weren’t all that anxious to set out into it.  It was nearly an hour before a few of them finally decided to cross the threshold.  Unfortunately, they had only a couple of hours to explore before the early Friday evening storm hit – and then began the 3-day Labor Day weekend. 

Anya and I shared “pullet check” responsibilities, as usual, over the holiday weekend – but we didn’t open the pop doors to the yard again until the following Tuesday workday, when we would be around throughout the day to check on them regularly.  Helped, in part, by some tempting Swiss chard greens strategically placed outside the doors, more of the pullets chose to come outside on Tuesday, and much more quickly than they did last Friday.  At one point, I counted as many as twenty-two brave pullets in the outside yard.  My guess is that number will continue to rise each day.

We also decided to start giving the pullets some of their "grower feed" in the adult feeders that are built into the walls of the hen house just below the nest  boxes.  I was a bit worried that they might not yet be tall enough to reach into these adult feeders, the height of which is not adjustable.  But they seem to be doing just fine!       

At night, increasing numbers of chicks->pullets are now perching on the adult roosts for the night (71 of them last night, by Anya’s count!).  Most of the rest have been roosting on top of the brooder box (vs. lying on the wood shavings below the brooder box, as they did during their downy chick days). 

We stopped turning the brooder box light on at night about a week ago – between the warm weather and the fact that the pullets are now fully feathered, we decided that it was probably well past time to do that.  And so today, Anya and I made another big change in the lives of these growing birds, and removed the brooder box from the hen house entirely. 

It will be interesting to see how many pullets will be perching on the adult roosts tonight!