sholio | Chickhaven

So today I built Chickhaven *g*, the latest incarnation in a series of attempts to construct a chick house that is big enough to accommodate the rapidly growing chicks, not too large to heat, and easy to clean. They outgrew this one in about a week and a half, and then I moved them into a set of taped-together cardboard boxes, sort of a chick condo (due to the boxes being too small to use just one). But the condo never really worked well; the "rooms" were chilly and dark and hard to get into, so the chicks tended to cluster around the heat lamp, and were starting to fight. On top of that, it was impossible to clean, because the chicks immediately destroyed their newspaper bedding and the bottom of the box, turning it into a marshy layer of paper mache impregnated with chick poop. I tried a sawdust floor, but they kept eating it. Back to the drawing board.

Chickhaven (also known as Chicktopia) is much better. It's made from some random sheets of cardboard that we had lying around from another project a couple of years ago (I think they were used to catch paint drips). One is a flattened box that was used to ship patio furniture, and I have no idea what the other one is, but in any case I was able to construct a really huge cardboard box from the remains. And then I lined it with old dog food bags (... I knew there was a reason we were keeping all of them) because they're made of a slick waterproof material. One end of the pen is a tray full of sand; the other end is covered with newspapers. The chicks ate a worrying amount of sand -- I'm sure some is good for them, but I was starting to worry a bit, though my husband pointed out that any animal that is thick enough to pack itself with sand until it dies is probably going to die one way or another despite all efforts to the contrary. *g* Which, well, point. In any case, they seem to have settled down, although I went out just now and discovered that one of them had somehow managed to wedge herself between the top of one of the dog food bags and the cardboard wall of Chickhaven, thus trapping herself. She seemed happy enough, all wedged down in there with no visible means of egress, but I "rescued" her anyway (to the tune of much indignant peeping).

Aerial view of Chickhaven. The region at the top left is where dumbfeathers managed to trap herself in record time. I really hope this doesn't set a precedent. There's also a branch and some rocks for climbing and perching on, since they seemed to enjoy climbing on top of their food and water containers.

They're SO much bigger and more chickeny-looking than they were just three weeks ago. The wings grew first, so for a while they were just balls of fluff with unrealistically large wings, but the rest of their feathers are starting to fledge out. In fact, they've developed a hilarious gawky-adolescent sort of look, although you can't really get the full effect in the picture -- all legs, wings and awkward tufts of feathers.