Galline Noises

We got out the real video camera this time so that there'd be sound along with the picture. If you listen closely, you can start to hear the Ladies making some grown up chicken noises. While there is still a lot of peeping and cheeping, they're definitely on their way to full gallinity.

Home Again...

We've returned from our first trip of the summer and the Ladies are all doing well. They're even starting to make some real chicken-sounding noises. We'll try to find a way to put a new movie up with sound so you can hear them.

Here are a couple galline pictures taken during out time away. The first one is of the Mother Hen looking for a rooster in the town square of Blue Ridge, GA. Alas, she did not find one and so has to continue to live with the one to whom she's already married.

These other two pictures were taken in a feed store in Blue Ridge. They had about fifteen different cages with all different breeds of chicks, most only a couple days old.

This last picture is of a live rooster, one of two who lived in the store as pets. While we were there, a lady came in and bought the rooster pictured. Apparently she thought he would help her hens produce more eggs. 

Leaving our Babies

Today, for the first time, we're leaving the Ladies in the care of someone else. 

The Mother Hen, Rooster, and Big Sister are all going south to visit family and for a week at the beach.  While we're gone, the Ladies will be cared for by a neighborhood family, but it still makes us sad to leave them for so long.  

Who knows?  Maybe they'll be making grown-up chicken noises when we return.

Big Feet and Big Snacks

The Ladies seem more and more comfortable with staying out in the coop full time. At least, we haven't yet had anyone crawling into bed with us in the middle of the night.

Something we like to point out to visitors is how big their feet are getting, so we thought we'd post a picture. If we're expecting the Ladies to grow into these feet, they may be over three feet tall when this is all said and done.

The movie below shows the Ladies enjoying some of their favorite snacks, as the Rooster is enjoying his. It's a tough choice between Flavor Ice and cabbage worms, but everyone seemed happy with the way things played out.

Domvs Gallinvs

The Ladies have now spent two nights out in the coop, where they will be spending their lives for the foreseeable future.  Here's a close-up picture to show how big they're getting.  They've become more accustomed to eating cabbage worms from our hands, but they're still pretty skittish throughout the day.  At night, they're very docile, which does not bode well if some predator were to make it inside the coop.

Here's a picture of the nesting box now inside the coop.  The large metal drum hanging in the foreground is the water cooler, around which the Ladies gather to share stories and jokes and catch up on who got voted out on Top Chef.  The metal drum in the background is the feeder, currently attached to the wall.  As the Ladies reach their full height, these will both be moved up to eating/drinking level.

And that's about it for now.  The Ladies seem to enjoy roosting and peeping.  We're starting to take bets on how long before we get some real chicken noises.

Visitors!

The Ladies are still getting bigger, so we're pretty much just adding pictures when we have new visitors.  Tonight was definitely the most visitors we've had at one time: five adults and four children between the ages of one and six (the children, not the adults).

It took a bit of hemming and hawing before the children were brave enough to get right up next to them, but the Mother Hen provided several grubs and worms as bribes for the Ladies; she's such an amazing person with young children, and in general.  

 

As you can see in this second picture, the oldest visitor got pretty comfortable with the Ladies after the first couple grubs were down the hatch.

The only other news is a couple more changes to the coop.  The Ladies now have a shingled and sealed roof area over one third of their coop under which to avoid the summer rains.  Per the approved algorithm, the Ladies should be able to survive 65-degrees by now, but we're still looking at lows in the forties and fifties for at least the next week.  We're thinking by the end of May they'll be out in the coop permanently.

Eating Grubs!

The Ladies continue to make a daily trip out to the coop. We recently purchased their more grown-up feeder and waterer, both of which will hang from the top of the coop eventually.

A lot of the time in the coop is spent, as demonstrated in the picture at left, roosting. The Ladies seem quite content to express their gallinity by getting a few feet off the ground and snuggling.

The Ladies really are attached to one another. The Mother Hen often comments about how when you take two out to the coop, the two left behind start crying until everyone is reunited.

Now that we've got the technology down, we're trying to take more movies. This one shows the Ladies enjoying their favorite snack, cabbage worms picked off of the plants in the garden. This is about the only way the Ladies let us get this close to them.