Medicine Gardens Diary: Chicken graduation party!

As chicks morph from cute, fluffy little peeps to semi-feathered awkward adolescents, they become significantly less endearing. Sort of like people. Gone is the steady, soothing "cheap cheap" call, and along with it the feeling that maybe I'm a bit stingy with my money. It is replaced by something akin to the squawking sound of a teenage boy making the transition from child to man. The soft layer of fuzz gives way to rudimentary feathers, and eventually to a fully feathered miniature rendition of a full grown chicken.

Even though they lose the appeal of cuteness, they begin to make up for it with self-reliance. They require no special care once they are introduced to the general population of chickens, freeing us from making several trips a day to the chicken brooder in the garage to fill feeders, clean the bedding out of waterers, and check on their general health. The big question, though, is exactly when and how do you introduce them to the big birds? If it has been a cold spring with more cold forecast for the future, like this year, another layer of complexity is added to the equation. How cold can the chickens handle? Do you ease them into it, or take them straight from the warm coziness of the brooder to the somewhat uncontrolled conditions of the chicken coop?

We decided to make the transition as easy on them as possible. I fenced off a corner of the chicken coop to keep the big birds from picking (and pecking) on them. Chickens quickly establish the pecking order when new birds are introduced, but sometimes it can border on brutality, so it helps to give the young and old chickens a chance to size each other up for awhile before they can actually get at one another. I also hung a heat lamp from the ceiling of the coop to provide them with some warmth on the cold nights. I turn it off during the day so they become acclimated to the cold weather. They are fully feathered, so as long as the change from warmth to coldness isn't too much of a shock, they should be able to handle low temperatures without any harm done.