As the Brooder Turns

My duct tape solution worked for like two days. Well, technically it worked perfectly on the areas it was covering. The problem is that it’s not really practical to wrap four pullets completely in duct tape. That’s right, the plucking continued and expanded to four chicks’ necks, tails and backs. It was easy to find the culprits. Just look for the pretty pullets nicely growing all their feathers without interruption. They have thus been dubbed the “Mean Girls.” Here are some shots of my pretty but mean girls at four weeks old.

 

The final solution has been to create two brooders. That isn’t all that hard but it does give me double duty when it comes to refilling feeders and waterers. They’ve been separated now about a week and the poor feather-plucking victims are growing their feathers back pretty quickly, albeit they are definitely not looking nearly as nice as the other two. Ironically, when I initially separated them the two “mean girls” I still had no lids on their tubs and they squawked horribly and then hopped right back into the tub with the others. Oh now you want to be friends with the other chicks, huh? Go figure. In my mind there is a whole soap opera going on which could loosely follow the plot line of the Mean Girls movie. But anyway, here are some pictures of the “unpopular” pullets. They are more high strung (for obvious reasons I suppose) and it took some patience to get a picture. I’m going to have to figure out how to tame them a bit more… with gloved hands. Those little nails are sharp!

  

It’s hard to imagine with schools being closed all week due to severe wind chills (-20s and -30s!) and lots of snow that in just four weeks they’ll be out in the coops and hopefully not eating any feathers! Come on Spring!