Day 71 - Chicks
Little chicks are quite adorable. The sounds they make are barely audible. They are fuzzier than a sweater. They are just plain adorable.
But they are dirty. Man are they dirty.
We knew that raising ten future egg layers would be a labor of love until they became capable of taking care of themselves. We had to give them proper food, fresh water, and attention. We also had to make sure they didn't get attention from our other animal friends. Our dog just wanted to lick them. We found out pretty quickly our cats wanted to do much more.
They first started off living in our living room using girl scout cookie boxes lined with paper towels as their habitat. Once they grew a bit bigger, we transferred them to a dog kennel. Though we tried to cat-proof the kennel we converted to a chicken nursery, one of our mischievously intelligent felines managed to help a chick escape late one night. Luckily, similarly to how she played with her mice catches before doomsday, she played with the chick just enough for it to make enough noise to wake up my wife. She ended kitty’s playtime and saved the chick from becoming a late night snack.
I worked on reinforcing the kennel even more so that we wouldn't have a repeat performance.
The kids enjoyed handling the bird each day to get more comfortable with the birds and allow them to become more comfortable with us. This was an essential part of the process as we needed to change their paper towel bedding twice a day.
When we first started raising them, we were probably overly cautious about making sure they were warm enough, making sure they had enough food, and observed them for any signs of distress. It almost felt like we were first-time parents again. However, we were just as happy to hand off these tasks and responsibilities to the kids as well.
The kids loved having chicks as part of their daily jobs. We affectionately called these jobs chicky chores. Changing the water, checking the food, changing the poop papers, and providing love and affection became a staple of their everyday chicken interactions.
