Chickens at Zaltana Anatolians: Spending more time outside

Today was a perfect day to give the chicks some more outside time. Yesterday morning I found several of them sitting on the sides of their box, they are getting pretty good in flying up to a 2 foot target and getting there gracefully. They are also getting increasingly "friendly", and when I go into their area and sit down everybody comes hopping up on my arms and shoulders to see if I have any goodies. So as soon as I can feed them a larger variety of treats I will do some training with them to get a

little more control with this little flock. So my chicks have a little sandbox, the sand in there is pretty fine grain, but it is sand, compared to the powdery dirt on our property. I am assuming the sandbox will come in quite handy when I get a few bugs for them, I can put the bugs in there which will make it harder for the bugs to escape.

This is a picture of the inside of their house, to the right are the two nest boxes, where they will hopefully go and lay their eggs in a few months.

I have been surprised today to see several of the chicks already hopping up on their perches, I have put a little bit of special grains on each of the three perches, so as they hop up they find some goodies. They were actually able to hop from the lower one to the higher ones without a problem. I think they are pretty smart.

Goldie is probably a cockerel, that means I better get ready for some rooster noises. He sure is a pretty little thing.

Lucie also has some nice golden feathers growing in around her neck, all her feathers are heavily marked.

Sophie is my other Ameraucana, the one that may also be a cockerel. It's amazing how different these two look, when they were babies, they looked very much alike, except for the stripe in the middle of their back, which was darker in Sophie. I still have no clue what she will look like when she (or he) will grow up. She is getting quite social with me, actually seems to start liking to be held and petted.

Mira my miracle chick, having a good time, actually we had a very funny situation yesterday. She got pooped on her leg by another bird, when she noticed all the poop covering her leg she let out a screech, she looked around like "oh my gosh, I have POOP on my foot!!!!" She carried on screeching and looking at the mess again and again. It was too funny how she acted. I ended up getting a hold of her and holding her leg under the faucet to rinse the poop off. While she objected to the procedure, she seemed quite relieved afterwards to be clean again.