The chicken shuffle!
Posted by Lauren on 15 Apr 2009 at 11:53 pm | Tagged as: chickens, pictures
*dance dance dance* It’s the chicken shuffle!
We had a lot of poultry in the house for the past few weeks. First we got the four new Wyandottes, who are over seven weeks old already. They have been living in the office, in two halves of a plastic dog crate, zip-tied together. Then one of the Rhode Island Red hens got sick, and so we brought her inside to keep an eye on her and medicate her; she has been living in the living room, on top of Ruby’s crate, in a huge Rubbermaid tote. And then a week ago we got the Ameraucanas who have been living in a big galvanized tub in the mudroom on top of the washing machine. The hen has been getting progressively better and so is trying to make a break for it and yelling at us periodically; the Wyandottes (aka the Mediums) are in their dust-making stage and also discovered a new game called “run really fast back and forth and flap your wings,” so the house is filled with their dust and pine shavings. The Ameraucanas are too small yet to be much trouble but they have an attitude so I think it is only a matter of time.
Today we got the call from the feed store that our new ducklings did arrive as scheduled, so it was time for the great chicken shuffle! (I guess actually poultry shuffle, but “chicken shuffle” rolls off the tongue better.)
Everyone but the smallest (the ameraucanas) got promoted. So the Mediums, the Wyandottes, moved from their dog-crate run out into a partitioned section of the big girls’ coop.
Mediums deployment: before and after, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.
And sick chicken moved from her tub in our living room* out to the chicken tractor on fresh green grass.
Sick chicken: before and after, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.
1. Sick chicken wants to move out of the living room, 2. Sick chicken is still angry but is happier outside than not
* Garth points out that if she were a factory farm chicken, she would be sharing this amount of space with at least two other hens. Best not to think about this if you buy eggs from the grocery store. Sorry.
Everyone seems very happy with the current setup (not least me with the reduced numbers of dust-making chicks in the house). We are really just gearing up for the turkey poults though … who knows what to expect!
Quite the variety! Hey the shuffle/rotation reminds me a bit of the seedlings – moving to larger quarters as the start growing past the pods….looking forward to hearing about the ducklings and turkey poults :-)
Good luck sick chicken!!!
OMGoodness! That is a ton of birds! Who knew! That is going to be a very busy place around Dropstone Farms. Great news!
Oh, and thanks for reminding me. We still get our eggs from Costco. My wife won’t even let me think about getting chickens here (both my brother and I secretly covett them) hehe.
Good luck with the poultry shuffle!