This one is for the family. It is very mellow with not much action, but shows North's perseverance and fondness for the "babies". I think North could chase these baby chicks for hours. He usually catches a few, but we have been working on the idea of "petting the chickens". When he picks up a chick, somehow he manages to flip them over so that their feet point up. Needless to say, the chicks are not fond of being upside down.
The structure North is climbing into was our duck house. I found it on Craigslist two years ago and asked Reed to drag it home. We no longer have ducks (yum,yum) so I flipped the house over so the hens won't hide eggs inside and am hoping to find a use for the structure again someday.
The black and white chick is a rooster. The first time I heard him crow, I laughed because I thought the strange, wimpy noise was coming from our neighbor's chickens. Reed pointed out that it was coming from one of our chickens and I shouldn't laugh too hard! The baby rooster uses the blue plastic tote to jump onto the duck house so he can crow in the same place as the big rooster. The baby rooster gets a little nervous about the jumping down part. He will pace the length and shake his feathers for awhile before finally plummeting to the ground. So far the baby rooster and the big rooster haven't had any problems together. All the chickens hang out together during the morning then the older birds and the geese free range in the afternoon and come home in the evening. The babies will venture out, but generally stay around the chicken run boundaries. We haven't been able to determine if any of the other chicks are roosters, so we might be OK for a little while longer. Our older rooster is a very mellow bird, I am hoping that our birds will divide into two flocks and we can keep both roosters.