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Lap Chickens Journal

Category / Baby Chicks
August 26, 2015
by Peter Gray

Happy pullets on a tree branch

I don’t have much to add here. This was the scene in the morning, soon after the five youngsters came out of the coop.

Category: Baby Chicks
August 25, 2015
by Peter Gray

Integrating new pullets into the flock

Despite our best efforts, we seem to lose one to two chickens per year to illness or predators, so we’ve been on a schedule of about three baby chicks every second year, and this year we got the five chicks described in previous posts, after an unusually high loss rate in spring and early summer….

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Category: Baby Chicks, Housing, Training
August 14, 2015
by Naomi Gray

Pippi with the Baby Chicks

A few days passed since Pippi came to our place. For the first couple of days, she was staying away from the rest of the flock. She was mainly following me around in the backyard, and to the studio because she was lonely. Today, I saw her on the bench with other baby chicks. Seems…

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Category: Baby Chicks, Social Life
August 3, 2015
by Peter Gray

Leo gets a pedicure

This morning after breakfast, Naomi gave Leo a pedicure. Leo has had some foot problems that we’ve tried to alleviate by several means. His style of jumping off things (benches, the deck, stumps, our laps) with a big bouncing leap seems to make him susceptible to little cuts or punctures when he lands on something sharp….

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Category: Baby Chicks, Medical, Training
July 25, 2015
by Peter Gray

Five chicks go (mostly) free-range

During their first summer, we want new chicks to learn how to forage and find their way around our property, but we feel a little apprehension about how they’ll adapt. So far, this has always gone more smoothly than we imagine. We’ve found that it’s important to give them a safe indoor refuge, and the…

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Category: Baby Chicks, Training
July 14, 2015
by Peter Gray

Our “traditional” outdoor dinner with the chicks.

For the first couple weeks that the chicks spent each day in the outdoor pen, we often didn’t have much time to be with them during the day, the weather was very hot, and the chicks were too small to risk mixing with the adult hens. So we started a “family tradition” of bringing our…

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Category: Baby Chicks
July 3, 2015
by Peter Gray

How much risk of illness from pet chickens?

[image above adapted from CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/zoonotic/gi/salmonella-poultry-poster.pdf]    Today a friend who recently acquired a pet duck and a 2-3 month old hen sent us a link to a Seattle Times article (http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/dont-kiss-chickens-6-sick-in-washington-with-salmonella/) about the dangers of handling poultry and contracting salmonella. The article reports 181 cases nationally, and 6 in Washington State, attributed to contact with backyard…

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Category: Baby Chicks, Medical, Poultry and human health
June 24, 2015
by Peter Gray

An outdoor pen for our growing chicks

An outdoor pen for chicks should satisfy several goals:  1) it gives the curious, active, growing birds a chance to explore and practice free-range foraging; 2) it protects them from daytime predators such as housecats and possibly ravens, magpies, and small hawks; 3) it’s cheap, simple, and easy to move to a new location each day;…

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Tag: cooling, food, heat, outdoor pen, water
Category: Baby Chicks, Food and water, Housing
June 22, 2015
by Peter Gray

Another 5-Chick Outing in Oregon

  In the hot part of the day at Smith Rock, when the sun was too bright and flat for good painting conditions, Naomi and I took a chick break near the edge of basalt cliff overlooking the Crooked River. Here’s Shantie waking from a brief nap in Naomi’s hands: Next, I happened to catch…

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Category: Baby Chicks
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Latest Posts

Chickens Path
Indoor Dust Bath
Shantie and Sophie warming up in front of Woodstove
Staying Warm
Molting Chicken
Molting Season
Pippi Kissing Leo

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