House chicks

I have chicks in my house.  At a recent chicken show, my niece won a large brooder with six Bantam Buckeye chicks, about one day old.  Emily took them to college with her, smuggling them into her apartment for a touch of home away from home.  After a week, she brought them home, realizing that they are noisy and the brooder lights keep her awake at night in her studio apartment.  So, they landed in my family room.

They are goofy and clumsy and constantly hungry.  Daily they grow and change.  From fuzzy sleepy little bundles of vulnerability, they quickly became squabbling scruffy long-legged streaks of activity with voracious appetites.  They have big kid feathers growing in at wing and tail, giving them a patchy, spiky appearance resembling the dinosaur birds, the archaeopteryx or the oviraptor (see Google image).

They are always in motion, always hungry, always zipping around in high speed, until, suddenly, they aren't.  Like some master switch has been thrown, they all lie down and sleep.  Jonestown Koolaid massacre-like.  Just as suddenly, the switch is reversed and off they go, fully restored and at full speed.

I am starting to consider what to do with them when they outgrow their brooder but are too young to go outside into a pen.  Everything is bigger then; birds, feeders, poop.  They get really messy.  Their pen requires cleaning every other day. A lot to invest in animals I didn't choose to have.  But my kids and my husband love these darn things.  Actually, I do, too.  They make me laugh.