Happy Father's Day etc.

After church this morning we spent the afternoon with Bret's parents. For lunch we grilled pork chops (Bret's favorite). Then we went bowling. It was a nice day. Bret got two stepping stones which the kids made and decorated with sparkles, tile, beads and some sea glass we collected in Ontario and Florida. He also got some new t-shirts. No ties!

Later it was time to clean the chicken "coop" (fancy word for dog cage with special features) and to give the chickens their first roost (after all they are almost one week old). I had Katie help me move the chicks one by one into a large cardboard box. We took out the yucky newspaper and pine bedding and put in nice clean newspaper and pine bedding--smells really good! Then we put them back in one at a time. All 26 of them. They were not very pleased about the disruption to their eat/sleep/poop cycle. When they got back in they took a minute to adjust to the new environment (and poop a little to make it smell more familiar). Then they ate as though I had deprived them for hours instead of only about 10 minutes.

I read in my chicken book that a roost should be about 1/2 inch to 1 inch off the ground and a stick will do. So, I taped some cardboard around the ends of a stick from the yard. It looks like a mini barbell. It looks really weird. The chickens thought so too. They totally freaked out and bunched up at one end of the coop. I'm not sure what they were thinking. After a minute of loud peeping, they responded to the stress in different ways. Some fell asleep, some ate, and some pecked at spots on the wall or newspaper. Several continued to stare at the odd-looking roost. One brave soul actually jumped over it and ran away. I didn't know what excellent entertainment a stick could be to a chicken!