Chickens in the bathroom

As you may recall, we have four (or five?  I've lost track) chickens living over at The Lady's parents' house.  And I'm in the highly-prolonged process of building a chicken coop.

Meanwhile, we have four formerly-baby chicks living in a plastic tote in our second bathroom.  During the night we leave the heat lamp on, and a towel covering the tote (there's also a board across the tote, so that they can't jump out).  During the days that one of us is at home -- and during the late afternoon, after The Lady picks the kids up from school and daycare -- we let them run around in the fenced-in children's yard just outside the back door. 

The fence is about as high as my waist, and the little chickens can flap and semi-fly, but only about the height of my knee.  So, it works.  Gives them some outdoors time.

I'm polite to the chickens, but they're not **my** pets.  The Lady gets their food and water, and cleans out their cage (currently with wood shavings in the bottom; I dump them on our potted plants, as mulch).  And the kids do a lot of cuddling with them.  So by the time they're fully-grown, they'll be **very** used to being handled.

Here's a video clip of the boys in the bathroom, cuddling the chickies.

Also:  our How to Care for Your Chicken books (we have three, so far) indicate that chickens tend to sleep in the highest perch possible.  I guess they feel safest doing that.

I looked out the window one day and noticed that all four of them were perched on my woodworking stump -- just hanging out .  Funny.  :)


--GG