Bucket o' Chicks

Here are our 7 lovely new chickens. They're in a bucket.

Somewhat through chance I've found myself in charge of these sweet fuzzballs. They've got me on a demanding schedule. Because mongooses roam around during the day, the chicks aren't safe to be left unattended out in the yard. That's how we lost the ducklings 2 weeks ago and every other clutch of chickens before this. So they're locked up most of the day; but they do need to learn how to be chickens, so I let them out with mama twice a day so they can scratch around and eat bugs in the garden. Then comes the ordeal of getting them back in their cage. We've found the most efficient (and most painless) way to re-coop them is to catch mama first, then collect the chicks in a bucket and dump them all in with her at once. They've grown so fast though--their wings are developed enough for them to fly up out of the bucket and escape. So when it's just me rounding everybody up, it's a long, drawn out (and frankly, obnoxious looking) affair of catching a wild and unruly mama, and then catching--and recatching--and recatching--the chicks. They calm down a bit once they're all in the bucket together.

I love them.