Well, the H Class babies are officially outside chickens! As mentioned in the update post, integrating the new babies with the older chickens has been quite a process, and is still ongoing.

All the research I did ahead of time said if you have a rooster, that can make the process smoother. Since my little bantam Pecan is such a good roo, I was optimistic. Turns out, Pecan gave them the hardest time. Oof. I kept telling the babies “there are more of you, and you’re already bigger than he is – just stand up to him!” I even tried putting him in “rooster timeout,” locked in the coop with the babies outside in the fence. He didn’t realize he was in trouble though: he was building a nest and making treat calls, trying to entice the others to join him.

Then my feisty little bantam miss, Pepper, decided she was going to chase them down. And she may or may not have managed to pull some feathers – and swallow them. Since going broody, she has been one wild little thing. I picked her up one day and was like “remember when you went broody and wanted to be a momma? This is what you would have ended up with!”

After misadventures, jailbreaks, and ending up with a lap full of baby chickens trying to hide from the bantams, I decided to try another tactic. I locked the babies up. They had food and water, and shade!, and were safely closed off from Pepper and Pecan. The idea being exposure would morph into familiarity and peaceful cohabitation. Plus, it got the babies’ smell all over the nesting box. This worked … mostly. Toting the babies out and then trying to catch them to bring them inside for the night was a massive workout, made harder by the bantams acting up. {They would settle down and ignore everyone during the middle of the day}.

The original plan was to build a bigger coop, but with the babies growing super fast and the integration struggles, we decided it was smarter to just order a second coop for the H class. They’ll spend some time locked inside, but hopefully it won’t be long before I can let them roam freely.

You’ll notice I’ve only called out Pepper and Pecan as tiny menaces. There’s good reason for that: Penguin and Pippin have been curious, but otherwise unbothered. Penguin even let them peck at her feathers a bit, and has been most interested in sharing their “baby food,” because #snacks. Pippin wasn’t interested at all until they grew past the bantams – I think she was afraid I had gotten more tiny chickens. Now they’re closer to her and Penguin in size, Pippin likes to stand by the coop and watch them. I’m hoping she’ll teach them about going up the ramp to bed at night, because crawling around on hands and knees inside that little coop trying to catch them is not fun.

At 10 weeks old today, the babies won’t be considered babies much longer! Once this bag of chick starter has been eaten, it’ll be time to transition them over to layer feed, and it won’t be long before we’re on countdown to first egg potential. It’s wild how time flies. And hopefully we’ll be able to have all 10 chickens doing their little chicken thing inside the fence together soon!