Today I took some strawberry scraps out to the chickens. They seemed to enjoy it by the way they were running around with them in their mouths. Joey on the other hand was sad he didn’t get a treat.

The Leghorn was so excited she had strawberry juice down her side.

The chickens were too fast to get any good pictures, but this one made me laugh!

The neighbor farmer has been working on the fence that butts up to our  property line. We were happy to see new calves were born and out in the pasture.

What has been going on this past week:

• Training with the automatic door. Obviously the morning is pretty easy, the door goes up and the chickens go out. At night it’s a different story. We have to make sure they are all in before the door goes down. Some get excited and try to keep coming back out to see us. This will be a work in progress.
• Since they have been outside we are filling the feeders less. They are getting enough food from bugs, grass and a few scraps we’ve thrown in. Today they are enjoying a whole cantaloupe cut into slices. We will see what is left over tomorrow morning.
• Based on the pictures we get of the chickens, the Barred Rocks and Orpingtons are the friendliest. The Leghorns and Reds are very skittish and hardly ever come up to us.
• We put some ash down in an area of the coop for a dust bath. It had all disappeared by the evening. I know a Leghorn was covered because when I saw her outside she shook and a whole bunch of dust flew off her body.
• I have been researching layer feed versus grower feed. What I have come up with is we need to switch to layer feed around week 18. If we start them too early the protein level is less in layer versus grower, and this could cause the bones to not be strong enough as well as kidney issues. We need to keep them on grower feed until they are ready to lay.  Leghorns can begin laying between week 18-20.

Last night Brock was putting the chickens in for the night and had quite a scene when he came in. A Red had flown to the top of the coop and was resting on the cord for the automatic door. He re-hooked the cord so this can never happen again. But we do know they can fly pretty high now!

We added some paper shreds to the coop for the deep liter method  and stirred it up real good. They have been dust bathing a lot. We plan to add a tire full of ash/sand. This will be their feather bath and will keep mites down.

They were able to be outside all day today. The Orpingtons were all out at the same time, while a Rock or Red would come out here and there. We have noticed multiple times that the 5 Orpingtons always sleep next to each other real close. The other 9 birds are roosting on the bar at night. Maybe they like each other, or this has something to do with the pecking order.

Joey has stayed out of the coop, but tries to nip at the chickens through the fence. This will continue to be a work in progress!