This morning was my first morning with the chickens and I managed to get up at 7:05 – pretty good considering I normally only manage to get out of bed at 7:42 (this is the latest I can get up to get into work at 8:00). I went down and let the birds out straight away and watched them for a bit before going to work. I didn’t really want to leave them!
Originally my plan was to go to Tesco at lunch time and pick up some beers for the weekend, but in the end I decided I had to go and see my chickens! I came back for an hour and watched them – they seem like they are settling in a lot better today. Yesterday I saw them pecking at the grass a bit but they didn’t look too comfortable and get pretty scared whenever I came near. Today they were like different birds – they were scratching in the grass and moving around a bit more.
This is the only one that will stand still for a photo!
One thing I did notice is that they were pecking each other a bit at lunch time. I gave them some sweetcorn which seemed to cause a few arguments. As far as I can tell the grey on is at the top of the pecking order, followed by the white one with the ginger one at the bottom.
While I was at home I decided to have a quick go at cleaning out the coop and that was pretty easy – I just slid the tray at the bottom out and picked up the poos (with rubber gloves). It took about 5 minutes to clean it.
In the evening I had pasta for dinner so I cooked a little bit extra for the birds and put it in their run. It was pretty fun to watch them eating the pasta shells – even though there were plenty of them to go round they all seemed to want to go for the same one, which meant all three of them were chasing the same pasta shell around the coop. By the time one of them actually got it, it was completely covered in grass which would end up stuck all over the girls beaks. Then they would be wiping their beaks on the grass to try and remove the sticky grass.
One thing that I have really noticed today is how tame the white one is – she would eat pasta out of my hand and even let me touch her. The grey one is still a bit nervous around me and the ginger one stays well away from me.
When it started to get dark (around 7:30) the white one kept going in and out of the coop again. I think she wants to go in but won’t do it on her own so she tries to get the others to follow. When all of the rest of them finally did get in she came out again for one last look around before heading in for the night.
This one keeps going in and out of the coop once it starts to get dark
When the chickens were in the coop I moved the run out of the way and raked the grass that was inside it. I was amazed the amount of loose grass that was laying around in the run! I also used a bit of kitchen roll and cleaned all of the poo off of the ramp (it looked like they kept pecking at it earlier which was disgusting so I thought I needed to get rid of it).