Well, its hard to believe that our babies are now 5 weeks old!  No longer the little yellow chick, but small white chickens!  They should have weighed 310 - 360 grams when I weighed them yesterday, but many of them were up to 425gms!  There are still a few that are a bit smaller, but they look healthy enough, so I'm not overly worried about them. 

They try to fly out of the sheds now when I open the door, manage to catch them all so far though!

I mentioned in an earlier post that the hardboard surround is 2ft from the ground, well in the bigger brooder shed, hubby had blocked in the corners so none could fall down the back, but the chicks use them for roosting on.  I regularly find about a dozen or so sitting up there when I open the door!

I forgot to mention in a previous post that I lost another 4 chicks.  My fault this time, and I'm embarrassed to mention it, but need to in case anyone else does the same thing.  I've been turning their heat off during the day for 2 weeks now, as its been very mild here, but this particular night we had a sudden cold snap, and I didn't realise it.  When I went out at 7.30pm to feed and water them.  I found them all at one end of the shed piled 4 high trying to keep warm, and underneath 4 dead ones!  They got crushed with the weight of all the others!

When hubby came home, I was still very upset, and all I wanted was a cuddle to make me feel a little better, but as he is generally unemotional where animals are concerned, he just turned away and said oh don't start that.  Which of course made me feel even worse!!!!!   MEN!!!!!

Then on Wednesday I thought I had lost yet another!!!  I'd started to cook dinner, but the last 2 onions I had in the kitchen were going a bit soft, so I went out to the greenhouse which is my temporary shed to get some more, when I heard a distress call.  I couldn't tell which shed it was coming from, so I stood in the middle of both of them. Silence……  Looked in the small shed, everything normal.  Looked in the larger shed and all the chicks were huddled at one end.  I couldn't think why, then I looked down, and one chick had jumped up onto the water bell, which has a metal hanging handle on top, but isn't hanging up, and she'd slipped and caught her foot in the handle and was dangling down very still.

I thought she was dead, and thought oh no, not another one!  Anyway, when I picked her up and released her foot, she came to and just sat there looking at me.  So I put her down and she just sat, dazed, so I left her for a little while and went and cut my onions up, when I came back outside, she was up and away with the others.     PHEW, what a relief!!!!

Well, we've re-homed all the ex batts now, and hubby and I took the end off the big hen house and he's started to do the concrete for the extension.  I cleaned it all out, and we found some red mite in there!  Something I've never had before, but the house is under some conifers, plus we've had more pigeons this year, and the swallows came back, so could have been any of them.

So I sprayed the whole house out with Jeyes, then the next day hubby hosed it out with the pressure washer, and we sprayed it with Jeyes again and let it dry, and now I'm painting it with creosote subs to try to keep them out.  I've never seen them before, and didn't realise how tiny they are, and how they get into such TINY cracks!!!!!  I've started dusting the new POL's with mite powder and will make sure there's plenty in the house, nest boxes and dust bath when the new girls go in there next week. 

I suppose you can use it on the chicks.  There's nothing to say otherwise on the container.

 Well, apart from that, not much else has happened this week so I'll log off for now.  More soon!!!!!!