Doesn't everyone keep their baby chicks under the bed?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS ISN'T
THE AUDITION FOR HAPPY FEET 2 ????

Our chicks made it through the night. I didn't sleep soundly and found myself waking up quite often. I probably would have slept on the couch next to them but I like my bed too much. Since I normally wake at 4:30 am for seminary, I was up and came to check on them. They were all laying around the floor of the brooder sleeping quietly. I went back to bed for another hour or so. I feel like a new mom!

I read that chickens like classical music. I have been playing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for these chickens. They seem to like it and are quite content. I am thinking about a surround sound system for the chicken coop so they can listen all day long. Maybe I will call my brood the Daughters of Ishmael.

So, today I took my sister, Gina, in for an appointment at Hershey Medical Center. On the way there we got to talking about the chicks. She wanted to know if I keep the chickens under the bed. What! Under the bed???? She said, "You keep them in an under-the-bed box, don't you." Well, technically our brooder is, in it's simplest form, just that....but we don't keep them under the bed. (They are happy in the corner of the family room, up on a table.) It was a priceless moment and very deserving of a blog notation.

The chicks seem bigger to me today. They did eat and drink a lot yesterday. Maybe they just fluffed out and seem that way. I can definitely see their wing feathers better. I was out researching chick breeds on the McMurray Hatchery website. It seems that our little exotic (who we named Jack Sparrow) is a Silver Duckwing Old English game bird. I think it is a "he" rather than a "she" so we will have to wait and see how it goes with the old pecking order.

Jack Sparrow

I have two babies with pasty bottoms. It could be from stress, but they seem ok otherwise. This happens to some chicks with the stress of shipping. I just think they might have dribbled some poo on their behinds and then everything else sticks to it. I have been keeping the vents clean to make sure we don't get a backup. This is the grosser side of chicken keeping, but I have wiped quite a few poopy behinds in my day....LOL.

I am off to go watch the babies now. TTFN.