Feathered Friend Friday: The Pre-Teens Go Outside!

Welcome to our series "Feathered Friend Friday." Every Friday I write a post with interesting facts, photos, or funny stories about our chickens and guineas. If you need to catch up, you'll find all the Feathered Friend Friday posts here. 

As you may remember, about eight weeks ago we got some new chicks from our local feed store. Since then, our hen Ellie went broody and hatched out five of her own chicks. So we now call the original chicks "pre-teens" and Ellie's babies the "chicks" to avoid confusion!

We moved the pre-teens outdoors to their new coop a few weeks back, and they have recently begun to roost on the perches in the coop at night. Once they begin to act upon their instinct to roost, they will usually return to the coop each night on their own so we figured it was a good time to let them explore the covered secure outdoor run.

We've done this several times, and it's always the same. They are scared at first and unsure of what to do with the pop door open. It takes a little coaxing to get one of them to come over and take a peek outside.

There's usually one chick that is a little bolder than the others (Pearl, in this case) and she will take the lead. Once she braves the strange new territory, the others will eventually follow.

We will let them stay in this coop until they are fully grown, then integrate them into the main flock. For now, they can all see each other since the runs are connected, so when the time comes to integrate them it should go much more smoothly. The chickens don't seem to mind the pre-teens at all and the pre-teens don't seem to care about the chickens, so hopefully they are already getting used to each other!

I can't end this post without reminiscing a bit. Two years ago today we closed on our house and began our homesteading journey. I still remember that day so vividly; full of promise and possibility. When we first moved, there was nothing out here. Just the house and a carport in the back. Over the past two years we have added a vegetable garden, flower garden around the house, and chicken coops with a big run that we have expanded several times. We have added many members to our family including Duchess, our outdoor cats Baby and Sylvester, a flock of guineas (and their two flocks of offspring), more chickens, and tens of thousands of honeybees. I am so very proud of what we have accomplished in such a short time. If we were able to get this much done in two years, I can't wait to see what the next five or ten years hold! Promise and possibility are still as rich and real as ever.

~Tammy

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