Author: Anna & Mark

Due to our extended
hatch and a cold
spell during the subsequent days, our oldest chicks spent the first
week of their life in a rubbermaid storage bin.  By day four, the
makeshift indoor brooder was starting to stink, even though I kept
tossing new leaves on the bottom.  It was simply way too small for
18 rambunctious chicks.  But some chicks were only four days old
— way to young to brave the elements.

So I set Mark to work on
insulating the outdoor
brooder so it could
handle chicks during a chilly spring.  He screwed sheets of
styrofoam insulation under the floor, then edged the foam with some
scrap tin so the chicks wouldn’t eat the insulation once they were
running around outside.

Nights were still
getting down into the high 20s and neither of us felt comfortable with
putting the chicks in the brooder despite the floor insulation, so Mark
decided to add an insulated
chick hover. 
He took another rubbermaid container, added some reflectix
insulation inside
the bottom, cut out a door near the top, and turned it upside down to
hold heat around the Brinsea
Ecoglow brooder.



The sun must have seen all of
our hard work, because the weather shifted just as Mark finished
revamping the chick coop.  Highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s
pretty much negated Mark’s efforts, but the insulation still made me
feel better when I put the chicks out in their new coop for the first
time.



We did run into problems
(of course).  First, it took the chicks an entire day of huddling
in the corner to acclimate to the observation window in their
brooder.  They also didn’t want to go under the hover (perhaps
because the brooder was accidentally unplugged and the chicks found it cold), so we
ended up taking out the tupperware container and herding chicks
underneath the brooder at dusk during their first day outside.



And then, like the
awesome little chicks they are, they bounced back.  Day two in the
outdoor coop found chicks running and jumping for joy, testing their
wings on the baby perch, bounding over the brooder, and pecking
thirstily at the waterer.  I started giving them large handfuls of
worms and greenery (mostly chickweed, bluegrass, and clover), and they
chowed down nearly as fast as I could supply the produce.



Now the only problem was the
brooder getting too hot.  Mark turned the
coop around so the observation window faced east, which helped block
late morning and afternoon sun, and I started slipping the lid halfway
off during hot days to let hot air vent out.  We may have to put
the brooder in the shade for our second batch of chicks, but we’ll
cross that bridge when we come to it.



Meanwhile, I’m wondering
how fast our little scamps will outgrow their new digs.  Perhaps
when they’re two weeks old, they’ll be big enough to understand
trotting up and down the ramp to explore pasture?

With the
Light Sussex at my brother’s house, I was able to let the rest
of the flock out to free range in the floodplain again.  Imagine
my chagrin to find chickens inside random pastures and in the garden in
short order.  Drat!



I soon found the problem
— our dog had build doggie doors in various fences to expedite her
patrols.  Lucy’s boltholes turned into chicken doors, allowing the
flock to go wherever they wanted rather than just where I wanted.



We’ve used
a short span of electric fence to train Lucy away from these problem
areas in the past,
but she always finds a new spot to burrow through.  After fixing
about a dozen dog holes in the past year, I decided it was time to try
a new strategy — making real doggie doors in the fences so that Lucy
could pass through but the chickens couldn’t.  After all, it is a
bit much to ask of our sentry that she run in huge loops around our chicken moats every time she wants to get
from point A to point B.



Mark threw together a
doggie door quite easily out of a bit of lumber (treated since it’ll be
in contact with the earth) and an old carpet.  He doubled up the
carpet and put a small piece of wood at the bottom to increase the
weight, making it less likely that a critter smaller than our hefty dog
could push through.



Training Lucy to go
through the door was pretty simple.  Mark stood on one side and I
stood on the other, both with treats in hand.  “Come on Lucy, good
girl!” called the master on the far side of the fence while flicking up
the edge of the carpet so Lucy could see through.  I’ll admit that
Lucy accidentally ran all the way around the barn once during the
training episode, but she soon caught on and went through the door
without any help from us.



Only time will tell
whether this dog door prevents Lucy from tearing apart the pasture
fences.  If no new holes show up in the next week or two, I’ll
have Mark install a couple more to make Lucy’s rounds even easier, and
then we may be able to sit back and relax as pasturing season rolls
around.