An eventful week for our feathered friends. The changes are apparent. First, they are putting on feathers. Their heads still have the yellow fuzz that is typical of cute little chicks, but white feathers are starting to come out. They are noticeably larger, too. We'll find out how much they've grown in a minute.
The storm that blew through on Wednesday set the birds back. First, many of them came very close to dying as they got wet and had hypothermia. Although we saved all of them, for probably 12 hours of the day, they didn't eat and didn't drink. Once they recovered, they ate, but in a life span of 8 weeks, losing half a day of nutrition is going to set things back a little bit.
The bug population has fallen off. Where I was feeding them between 95 - 200 beetles each night, tonight only 5 beetles were found. That falloff in protein will be missed by the birds. We're expanding the real estate within the chicken tractor that they can roam on, almost daily. Since they are eating more each day, they are also pooping more. We move the chicken tractor to fresh grass, so that they aren't standing in their poop.
So tonight is the night I pick out an average looking bird out of the flock of 32 and bring them to the kitchen scale to see where we measure up. Like a prizefighter standing before the scales, let's look at tonight's heavy-weight competitor:
Notice the big dinosaur-looking feet on that little bird. That means he's got some growing to do to fit into those "shoes."
Let's zoom in on the weight:
1 pound and two ounces. In looking at records of past history, 20 ounces at this time hold the record, I think. This bird isn't materially far behind.
At a day old he weighed 3 ounces.
A week later, he more than doubled his weight to 6.5 ounces
Not to be outdone, a week later, he more than doubled his weight to 18 ounces or 1 pound 2 ounces.
That's pretty good growth there. We'll see if we can keep them healthy, happy and growing! Next week we'll see how Week 3 goes.
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