Settling in

These are the rapidly growing chicks.

Those early woggles have me thinking 'boy'.

Same with this little guy.

And this one is very rooster-ish now too!

So I've gone from thinking we'd managed the impossible dream of 3 girls to wondering if they are 3 roosters. The one at the bottom has the same shaped comb at their father, the top 2 have the single comb like their mother.



They have settled in to our new home wonderfully and make the old house picture perfect strolling across the lawns.

And they are part of the gardening team. (You'll have to turn sideways for this one -- for some strange reason Blogger insists on twisting it sideways!).

 We are in the process of building new lodgings for the chooks.  Pulling down the old ones means lots of earwigs and slaters to gorge themselves on.  It slows down the job considerably because with every peice of timber that's moved I have to wait for the chooks to clean up the bugs before I can move on to the next peice.

Yesterday they were in danger of being squashed with the roof threatening to fall but there was no moving them on until every wriggling insert had been devourered.

They really are great pest control.

The chicks chased each other for an hour taking turns to peck at a huge huntsman spider.

One sad thing to report: during that massive storm and flood event last week I didn't go out one night to move Alice in when she had gone clucky in a nest she had built outside the run.

The thought of having to climb through 2 wire fences in torrents of rain then carry a pecking chook back and try to settle it elsewhere seemed like a big hassle when the chances of any predators being out in such weather seemed remote but I learnt a hard lesson.  It seems foxes and/or feral cats come out whatever the weather because the next morning all that remained in the nest was a pile of feathers.

Fox proofing is top of our list with the new enclosure design.