Libération!

The chicks are finally out of the house! While the chicks are still getting used to their spacious new coop, it is Keith and I who are enjoying the glorious freedom of not having a dozen chickens in the house anymore! We happily don't have this in our front room anymore:

We had a few final touches to finish yesterday before the whole coop could be opened to the chickens. Keith and Hugh installed a roost for the chicks. Hopefully being able to chill out on the roost and look at the mountains will inspire loads of eggs! I got in there to stain the remaining bare wood to seal up everything.

The chicks could not have had a more beautiful day to move into their new house!


And these chicks are monster sized compared to the tiny little chicks they were only 7 weeks ago. (and the black one in the middle is a rooster-we now refer to him at Col. Sanders!)


Just a reminder: chicks day one:


Moving into the coop is a learning process for the chicks. They haven't learned that they need to walk up the ladder to sleep up in the cozy coop. While they did quickly learn how to walk up the ladder, they never stayed up there very long. As the evening got colder and darker, they didn't move upstairs. We paused to movie we were watching (Chicken Run) and manually moved them all up.


This morning Keith opened up the coop at 7am and I fed them at 8am, but the chickens were not ready to face the world until about 10am. They figured out that I moved the food down on the ground, so the only way they were going to get breakfast was to mosey on downstairs. Eventually they'll figure everything out that they need to!