Tonight we had our first chick boot camp. For the last few days, whenever I put my hand in the brooder to feed or water or say hello, one of the girls jumps up onto my hand and flaps her wings a bit until she settles down. They seem to enjoy it when I pull them out of the bin up high above the world they know. I thought this might mean they're ready to learn to roost. WRONG.



Chickens roost at night to stay safe from predators. They sleep while roosting, and somehow never fall off the dowel like I certainly would if I tried it. It's an instinct for them and, according to all our chicken literature, they'll take to it from a very early age.




So I found an old branch from a large houseplant I killed, and hacked it up a bit to make a roost. Each chick got a turn being forced to stand on the branch high above the floor of the brooder. Each time I let go of their weird little chicken feet, they'd do a very ungraceful flap/fall/dive to the floor of the brooder. Our chickens do not seem to have instincts yet. Above, you see Chynna about to leap to her doom rather than stand on the stick. She'd such a drama queen. I wedged the roosting bar into the crate with them for tonight, so perhaps when I go visit tomorrow, they'll all be happily roosting away. Maybe they're just autodidacts.

In other news, DebbieGibson is either assertively informing the other chicks that she's at the top of the pecking order-- solo artists are like that-- or she's a dude.