Chickens moving in - Chickens moving out

For the last 3 weeks our garage has played host to 99 Cornish Cross Meat birds. We like to keep them protected from the elements until they get some feathers on them and are a little older and not as fragile.  I can't even begin to describe the smell in the garage.  It was high time for these birds to be out on pasture. Benjamin helped me and we loaded 15 birds at a time into an empty molasses tub and made numerous trips out to the chicken tractor. After a number of trips, we had all of them into their new home.  I think they liked having more room to spread out.  They had out-grown the brooders that they were in.

A big bucket of chicken

Our chicken tractor is nothing pretty to look at.  It is functional, however, and keeps the birds warm and out of the elements.  It is just not aesthetically appealing.  Just look at that thing.  Last year we lost a few birds to a predator.  This was prior to having Big Boy on duty to guard the flock.  This year Big Boy says that any predator has to come through him to get to the birds.  We'll see...

Big Boy guarding his flock

Looking inside the chicken tractor, you can see that we have moved the four heat lamps to the tractor to keep the chicks warm.  They'll have to do their jobs as we're expecting weather in the 20's again this week.  

99 birds in the chicken tractor out on pasture

Now prior to moving the chicks into the tractor, we had to move the chickens out that were living there.  If you recall from a blog post from back in November, we had a number of young chickens that were given to me that we were raising in this tractor until they were bigger.

Chickens can be very territorial.  There is a distinct "pecking order" that is established. New chickens must be carefully introduced to avoid chaos and bullying.  I learned that there is a trick to this.  In order to best introduce them, you do it at night when all the hens are on their roosts.  You put the new birds on the roost beside the older birds and supposedly, the older birds look over in the morning and say, "Oh, a chicken" and the acceptance of the new birds to the flock is done as opposed to just putting them all together during the middle of the day.

Snoozing Chickens

So that's what we did.  Benjamin and I moved the young chickens into the hen house and put them on the roosts right by the others.  Unfortunately, we woke up the old girls in the process and there was mass confusion and chaos.  Everyone's feathers got ruffled (literally).  We'll see how they are in the morning.

Not sure they are liking the new place to roost

So we have chickens in new places all over the pasture.  It's not easy for anyone to get acclimated to new surroundings.  In a few days I think everyone will be settled in and happy.  It just takes a little time.