Thursday, November 23, 2017

Chicken collage

Our chickens have inspired art and poetry .....

If you're wondering why so many of the poems are about cockroaches, well, we have discovered that chicks LOVE cockroaches. And everyone has been finding or bringing them to school to feed to the chicks.

When we drop a live cockroach into the chick pen they go nuts. Whoever gets it has to run to try and keep it from the others. The others all chase the one who has it and we cheer them on. Hazelnut often wins. She is the most adventurous and quick-witted chicken.










 

 

 









Monday, November 20, 2017

Growing up fast

The chicks are now two weeks old. They have grown very fast.
Now they are living permanently on the deck.

 


 

The cage keeps them safe from predators like cats and rats.
The chicks are even starting to roost.
We have a lot of fun when someone finds a cockroach and drops it into their enclosure. The chicks all try to get it off each other and the one with the cockroach runs laps round the pen with the others in hot pursuit!



Here is Acorn.
 See her new wing feathers and the beginning of tail feathers.



Thursday, November 9, 2017

Chick update

The chicks have only been out of the eggs for four days and already we can see little feathers starting to grow on the tips of their wings.

They now have names!

Sunshine

Shadow

Hei Hei

Hazelnut

Acorn
We opened the last two eggs yesterday to see why they didn't hatch. One was unfertilised so it never even started developing a chick. The other was nearly fully ready to hatch. It was a perfect little chick. We don't know why it died. We buried it in the Butterfly Garden.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Baby chicks

After exactly 21 days the chicks have hatched.
There are five little cuties huddled under the brooder.

This little one is a Dorking chick

The first two to hatch. A Dorking and the blacker one is a Barred Plymouth Rock.


Here is the third chick, resting after struggling out of its egg.

And number four! A Light Sussex

Here it is fluffed up. It is important to leave them in the incubator until they have dried off and got fluffy.

They are resting under the brooder where its nice and warm.

The first four. Look at the pretty markings on the Dorking chick.




Number five is taking its time to get out of the egg. It's another Dorking chick. You can see DK on the shell.

Now to choose names.
Here are some of our ideas.


Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Blackbird Chick

Oh my goodness! Things are getting complicated!
We are four days from the chickens hatching, and this morning a different variety of  chick arrived, uninvited.
It is a blackbird chick (we think) and it is a nestling. That means, it hasn't made feathers yet.

We found it on the concrete path this morning. It had a brother (or sister) which unfortunately, got stood on by a teacher.

We are attempting to keep this chick alive. it is in a nest from our Papatuanuku table and under the chick brooder to keep warm. We are feeding it kitten jellymeat and hard boiled egg with a paintbrush.

I'm hungry!!!!!

WHAT A MOUTH!

The chick is under the chick brooder. it is a heated place designed to keep little chicks warm.



We mixed this jellymeat with egg.

We are using the Vimeo View to watch the chick. It was actually set up to watch the chickens hatch but it is being used for the baby blackbird first.

Here it is, asleep

This is the food.

The snakes heads are actually the lights and camera for the mimio view. It is connected to Ms Jones's computer and projected up onto the data screen. We can watch the action from anywhere in the classroom.

Here is some of our writing about the blackbird chick:

We found a baby bird. It was cold. I felt so sad for it but my mum bought cat food so she saved the day. The baby bird has a yellow beak. When it is hungry it waves it's beak.
Aleah


Me and my brother fell out of our nest and tumbled onto the concrete. My brother was squashed. It was a terrible sight!
Next minute I was in a strange place with humans all shouting. I was so happy when some friendly human fed me. When I turned around I saw some sleeping eggs. Maybe they are my younger siblings? Well, the don't look anything like me!
Aala


One day I was sleeping happily, then in the blink of an eye I was tumbling down a hill. My brother was with me when we hit the ground. I heard a squishing sound. My brother was squashed! A human picked me up and put me in a nest.
Ruby-Mei