Owning chickens has brought out unseen sides of Dan and I. A professional might want to recommend chicken-owning to recently married couples as one of those team building exercises or studies. For example, a newly married wife might discover her husband has a soft spot in his heart for feathered fowl. Or the husband might discover his wife gets overly emotional the day her chicken gets hit on the road.
Something I've learned in this adventure is how much Dan loves to build luxury and highly protective chicken housing. He's good at it too. (That weasel taught us A LOT!) Our 3 week old chicks have been moved into what I call, The Palace. They will live here until they are about 3 months of age, which is the age they should be safe enough to enter The Fortress with Flock 1. If they enter into the group too young, Flock 1 could kill them.
The Palace is basically a bigger version of Brooder 2.0., being an old 300 gallon watering tank. It has the same wood around the top and latching chain mail door. It has the same lighting system, but Dan added a roost, which the chicks love.
They even have a window which you can see in the picture above.
The Palace is placed in a kennel area, separate from the one the older girls can go into.
Our hope is that when the chicks get older we can open the door of the brooder during the day, let the chicks run around in the kennel, then hopefully they'll go back in the brooder at night and we can lock them in, safe from predators. That is OUR plan...I'm sure THEIR plan is different.
Raising these chicks would be a little easier if we didn't have the existing chickens to worry about. Personally, I can't wait until everyone can live together as one big (hopefully) happy family, and start cranking out the eggs!
"Our Chicks Lay The Best!"
...cluck... cluck... chirp... chirp...
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