Doting on Our Chicks and Building a Run.

Doting on our chicks and building a run.

If you’ve been reading along this far, you may realize that I mentioned that we were to get five hens and one roo, but provided eight names in all. Why? Because when we arrived to pick up the chicks there were eight in the wee hatchery at the farm. My wife looked at the chicks and then looked at me. Then she looked at the chicks and then again at me. So, I forked over the additional $11.98 and we ended up with eight baby chicks in all. The kind folks explained that the wee green patch under the chin of one of the chicks was an indication that one of them was, indeed, a roo. Then, they had me sign a legal document explaining that I was buying these birds as LIVESTOCK and not as pets … which is against the laws of nature, apparently. Not wanting to run afoul of the farm cops, or whatever state agency thinks that a reasonable person needs to be reminded that keeping a chicken in the house as a pet is a really dumb idea (and trust me, it is), I signed, paid, and herself and I were on our way with our little brood.

As for spoiling the new babies, I could list the things you should do to ensure healthy, happy babies, but that is all over the more educated chicken blogs so I’ll leave it to them to inform the curious. While we did the usual things such as measuring the feed, taking care of ‘pasty butt’, and playing with them (yes, that’s important too, they have no mother after all), the things we did above and beyond that include:

Playing Billie Holiday during daylight hours to sooth them and get them used to human voices even when we weren’t around.

Bringing in special treats that were age appropriate as they grew such as yogurt, bananas, later on a few meal worms, and the like.

Worrying over Myrtle’s bent toe (if caught right away, these can sometimes be fixed, but we felt Myrtle might have gone too long and trying to fix it may have made it worse … if a baby chick is debilitated due to this then the humane thing to do is put them down, but Myrtle was and is fine … bent toe and all).

Playing ‘baby chick tag’ … easy enough. After about a week, they are old enough for more treats. Toss in a blueberry. One chick will grab it and run and the others will give chase. It makes no difference if you toss in MORE blueberries … they will be ignored until the chase is sorted out.

Holding the baby chicks on your finger to teach them to perch and get used to being handled. None stood prouder on my finger than wee Coq Au Vin! (You remember Coq Au, this is a blog about Coq Au).

The cats took particular interest as well. I know their intentions were good and I am sure they would have liked to personally meet the baby chicks to ensure their health and welfare, but my wife and I thought the stress of it all would’ve been too much for our two felines and we didn’t want to expose them to all of that worry. So, Moonkie and Osha were relegated to staying OUT of that room, though they did often perch themselves at the door outside desperately trying to peer under the crack.

Quick side note concerning the naming of cats. Herself and I are TV junkies and one of our ‘stories’ we like to watch is Game of Thrones. With this in mind and realizing the importance of naming cats their full names are as follows …

The cat we chose:
Moonkitty Veronica Corningstone-Masters Gill Esq., the Doonk of Donkey, and the first of her name.

The abandoned cat that no one wanted who came to live with us:
Osha Street (‘street’ being the bastard name given to illegitimate births in the NJ part of the realm).

What you’re thinking is correct. My wife and I are not well.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking on getting the run ready. I built the run myself, but part of making it secure is by digging a trench around it and burying the chicken wire a good half a foot underground to prevent digging predators. Yes, this is a real thing.

Here’s a short story about it from my distant past:
When I was small, my parents decided to get chickens and with five acres surrounded by MANY acres of protected woodlands this was not even an issue. They converted an old shed and obtained some chickens from the neighbors. They built and open top run and didn’t bury the wire. The run was tree covered, so threat from birds of prey was minimal. Well … one night a raccoon had gotten into the coop and the hens kicked up quite a fuss, as did Romeo (the old rooster we had). Now, I love and respect wild life … I respect life in all of its forms. But when there is a predator in the coop, they need to be dispatched. Raccoons are cute, funny, adorable little animals with as much right to live and follow their nature as any other living being … but when cornered in the back of your hen house, muzzle covered in the blood of the injured hen before him, they are a lot less adorable. He found himself on the wrong side of my father’s thirty aught six. The hen also needed to be put down and thus two lives were wasted.

Not wanting to repeat a scene like that if at all avoidable, I decided I needed to dig the damn trench and bury the wire. My day to day desk job means that doing this kind of physical labor could’ve been difficult and overly time consuming by myself with the chicks getting larger day by day … so plying them with the promise of beer and pizza, I bribed my close friends to come over with shovels and help. I love my friends and they turned out in grand fashion! Trench was dug and the run up in a day. Only thing left for me over the next few days was burying the cinder blocks placed in the trench on top of the buried wire and fashion a door to the coop. None of this is in anyway exciting, but never the less I am proud of my efforts, grateful to my friends, and to this day, years later, the run is still as solid as fort Knox. The photo is from summer 2016 and everything is still good to go. Anyone wanting the incredibly dull minutia of the details of its construction is welcome to ask in the comments.