Chick Recap: Take 1

Awhile ago one of our customers came and told us about a wired tunnel they saw at the tip. She thought that we might be interested in it for our chicks. Anyway that weekend Kel went to the tip to have a look at it and $10 later it was ours.

The frame was well made however the meshing over the tunnel was a bit scraggly. Kel cut the bottom out of it so it sat directly on the ground and tidied it up a bit so that it was chick proof and also weather proof. We wanted to get the chicks that no longer needed a heat source out of the brooder ASAP so fixing the tunnel up properly would have to be done later.

We placed the wired tunnel into Solomon’s yard and then transferred about fifteen chicks into it that were ready to leave the brooder.

The plan was that in the mornings we’d let Solomon out of his yard and then let the chicks out of the tunnel. Then at night we’d lock the chicks up in the tunnel and then put Solomon to bed. As we’ve mentioned before, Solomon has been trained to respect the chickens so the tunnel was perfectly safe being in his yard. We didn’t feel comfortable letting the chicks roam unsupervised with Solomon as they are small and he could accidentally hurt one so our plan seemed perfect.

Although our plan was good, sadly one night we lost one of the chicks. It was pouring with rain and we must have miscounted the number of chicks in the tunnel because the next morning we found our oldest chick dead in one of the holes Solomon had dug near the apple tree. It had obviously not been able to make it back the tunnel and jumped in the hole to stay warm and dry however it wasn’t warm enough by itself. We had already lost some chicks by this time due to various reasons however losing the eldest was a real blow. It still hurts my heart thinking about it.

It was the first egg that hatched for us at the beginning of this journey and we didn’t even get to see it grow up.