A Quick Pic

The girls are getting so big!  I'm going to have to build their coop within the next couple of weeks!  I'm pretty swamped with work, hence the lapse in postings, but here is a pic I took today.

First Field Trip

This is from a couple of days ago...we took the girls out for their first field trip. They weren't quite sure about the grass, but Phillipa found a worm!

New Home Sweet Home

I started out building a place that I could put the girls while I cleaned out their corral, but I also wanted it to double as a temporary shelter for taking them outside for backyard field trips until they're big enough to go out there for good.  Anyway, it turned out so well that it's going to be their new place - probably until they move out to a coop.  It cost less than $20 to build and probably only weighs a couple of pounds.

This is pen folded flat (for getting it through doors, easy storage, etc.):

This is it unfolded:

And here are the girls enjoying it:

They're getting so big!  Gertrude, Phillipa, and Vera will jump on my arm and Gertrude climbs up to sit on my shoulder sometimes.  More photos of them very, very soon!

3 Rocks and a Brahma

So, despite wanting to be surprised with the breeds of my girls, curiosity got the better of me.  I had an inkling that the black chicks (Gertrude, Phillipa, and Vera) were Barred Plymouth Rocks, and I've pretty much confirmed that.  Alberta was a bit trickier to figure out, and I had to enlist the help of other members of backyardchickens.com ("BYC") by posting pics on one of the forums.  Going from the list of breeds from which my batch was likely to come (see my earlier post), I just googled pics of the chicks to see which kind looked the most like her.  I thought that maybe she was a type of Ameraucana, but as a BYC member pointed out, they don't have feathered feet, and Alberta does.  So to make a long story short, Alberta's comb (a pea comb) coupled with her feathery feet makes it likely that she's a Brahma.  Of course, to be certain, I'll just have to wait and see!

So, anyway, here are some more developments in the world of the Naptown Chicks:

1.  The girls are starting to fly!  I had to rebuild their enclosure to make the walls higher.  Gertrude and Phillipa were flying up to the top of their feeder.  In the case of Phillipa, she flew to the top of a box of crickets that I had put on top of the feeder.

2.  Tails are cute!  The girls are starting to grow tail feathers - they're adorable!  You know how sometimes you look at a baby and you're struck with the realization that all of the tiny parts (fingers, toes, noses, etc.) are all just miniature versions of adult sized parts?  Well, that's how it is with these tail feathers.

3.  Feathers are a really cool way to cover a body!  Every time I see one of the girls open her wings, I see a new pattern on her feathers.  I don't know if it's a new feather, or just a pigmentation in an existing feather (although I'm leaning towards the latter, because there are hardly any feathers lying around their enclosure), but it is so cool!  I really notice it on Alberta because of her light coloring, but Vera, Phillipa, and Gertrude are starting to get lighter bands across their feathers.  Speaking of "light" coloring, Alberta is (as I said before, probably) a "light Brahma".  At first, I thought of this as akin to the opposite of dark (light = adjective), but the more I look at her, the more I think that Alberta is actually the color of light (light = noun).  Anyway, here are some cool feather pics:

4.  Chickens are definitely dinosaur cousins!  I'd never really looked at a chicken's feet before, but they are insanely awesome, and they look just what I imagine many-a dinosaur's feet look like.  They're scaly, but not, and the toes are super long and flexible and just generally neat.

5.  Everyone loves to cuddle.  Sweet dreams!

I dub thee . . .

Just as I'd hoped, the personalities of Gertrude and Vera are starting to shine through, and there have been some interesting developments with Phillipa and Alberta as well.

Gertrude the Great
I've dubbed Gertrude "the Great" because she's pretty awesome at everything she tries!  She is always the first to try something new.  She is really brave with me and she doesn't struggle or panic-chirp when I'm holding her.  If I put my hand in their enclosure, she's the first to come give me a little peck.  Because of her Greatness, Gertrude was the chick we chose to introduce to Guinness (our German Pinscher).  I held Guinness back and Marcus cupped the tiny girl in his hands.  Guinness snapped at her head and my heart stopped.  I shouldn't have worried, though.  I should have known that Gertrude has stellar reflexes.  She was fine :)  (I'm still recovering, though, and I won't be trying that again for a very, very long time!) Yesterday, I got some little crickets and put them in with the girls.  Vera, Pip, and Alberta didn't really know what to make of them at first, but Gertrude went right to it and with a few quick pecks, gobbled the tasty treat up.  I put some more in, and she was the fastest and most accurate of the girls at catching them.  Once, Gertrude slowed down her awesomeness to let one of the other girls try to catch a cricket.

Vera the Vigilant
It took me a while to figure out which title to bestow upon Vera.  She is patient, intelligent, an docile.  I think "Vigilant" does a pretty good job of bringing those qualities to mind, and it goes nicely with her name.  Vera watches.  She watches the other girls and she watches me.  Vera was the second-to-last girl to catch a cricket - I think because she was studying the other girls' techniques and waiting for just the right moment to come along.

Phillipa the Proud
In my last post, I said Phillipa was the bravest.  I was wrong.  She is all talk and no game.  Of course, she compensates by being bossy.  Oh dear, we'll have to work on her social skills and agoraphobia.

Alberta the . . .
I really can't decide on Alberta's title, although I want it to start with an A.  Suggestions?

My favorite thing about Alberta so far is her voice.  When she is chirping, I know exactly what kind of mood she's in.  She's super skiddish, so when I try to pick her up, she sprints away (and this girl is fast!) and chirps frantically.  I imagine she's saying something like, "Run for your lives!  It's a monster!"  Sometimes when she poops, she lets out a little chick version of a sigh of relief - it's a little trill up.  I heard the best sound yesterday, though, when Alberta caught her first cricket.  After dolefully watching on as Gertrude beat her to the first critters, Alberta was justifiably jubilant when she snapped up her squirming trophy.  She wasn't quite sure what to do with this new treat, but by golly, it was hers!  She just ran circles around the enclosure with the hapless bug in her beak, showing off her prize.  The whole time, she chirped in ecstasy - "It's mine!  I did it!  Look at what I did!"  It was like she'd just found the last golden ticket.  She did it every time she caught a cricket after that.  (Phillipa did the same thing; Vera just did it with her first cricket and was much more modest about it.)

I made a little scale to measure the girls' size.  Here are some pics (these are 1/2" increments).  The first one is Vera.  After carefully observing and assessing the situation, she deemed it safe to stand near the new sign. The second one shows three of the girls (I think it's Gertrude, Alberta, and Vera, left to right) standing unhelpfully away from the chart.

Afternoon Naps

Henrietta was buried today under a warm sun, beside our pond, and on a bed of soft fern leaves, fragrant blue muscari, and miniature pansies.  Pink, orange, red, and white tulip petals covered her tiny body, and I planted yellow tulips above her.  It was really lovely, so no more sadness.

Her sisters are doing great!  Alberta and Gertrude did have sticky bottom, but I cleaned them up, and they're fine.  Sticky bottom is when poop cakes on the chick's "vent" (that's what my book calls it).  If the chick's "sticky bottom" isn't cleaned off, the little bird gets plugged up and can eventually die.  A little warm water, gentle picking, and triple antibiotic to grease the feathers a bit, and . . . voila!  In case you're wondering, I've watched both Alberta and Gertrude poop since then.

I was watching them a lot this morning, and some personalities are starting to come out.  Phillipa is the most fearless (sometimes I call her Phillipa the Brave, but Phillipa the Bossy is probably more accurate).  The other girls avoid eye contact with me when I look in on them and they are still kind of timid when I pick them up, but not Phillipa.  She will stare right at me and defiantly pooped on my hand when I picked her up this morning.  She has beautiful markings on her face, too.  There's a little yellow spot at the corners of her beak, and a little yellow flash (it looks like a brush stroke) at the corners of her eyes.  She has no qualms about jumping on and over the other girls like a frog hopping from one lilly pad to the next.

Alberta is the next most rambunctious.  She is a little shyer than Pip, but can definitely hold her own.  As the only yellow one in the bunch, she sort of reminds me of the Boy Named Sue.  She can and does jump on and over the others, but her preferred method of asserting her presence is to just juggernaut her way around.  

Vera and Gertrude are great, too, and I can't wait to see their personalities come out in the days to come.  For now, I'm entertained just watching them sprint around and listening to their chirps.

After all of this running and jumping and a delicious lunch of chick feed, the girls all snuggled down for a well-earned afternoon nap.

Sadly,

Henrietta died sometime this evening.  Rest well Little One.