In a week spring turned into summer, and in a week the little chicks were taken outside for the daytime. For the first couple of nights I took them to sleep under the shed roof, but from the third night I trusted the warmth under the mother hen's wing. The night frosts were over and the forecast promised 7 to 10 C overnight.
The little chicks got a new coop of their own, quite a small one. I move it onto fresh grass every day, or several times a day.
In the picture the chicks are 3 weeks old and one Araucana chick is sitting on the mother hen's back. They like riding about up there, sometimes several at once.
When these chicks were 1 month old I let them in with the big birds, with a separate run under the shed roof for the night. To the mother hen all of this was known, familiar ground. She looked the run over, went to inspect the big birds' run too and peck a few grains there. The little ones looked over both runs with mum as well. In the evening I still separated the big birds and the clutch of chicks, for the little ones' safety and because their food is different too. Within a couple of days everyone understood that by day they could go exploring anywhere, and the big ones even came into the chicks' run to lay, but at night they were apart all the same. If a hen strayed into the chicks' run, the little ones raised a great racket at once and the mother hen chased the visitors off.
Happily these chicks are now better used to me too. They bustle around my feet and study whether anything is going to be handed out, and what.
After a while they were already racing across the run after me, because my arrival often means something good for the beak.
What is interesting is that last year this same mother hen treated her chicks as small and helpless for a full 5 months, taking them under her wing to sleep and calling them to eat. With this clutch, though, she began pushing the chicks away as early as week 5.
When the chicks were 6 or 7 weeks old, the mother hen moved into the big hens' run for the night and chased the chicks out of it, so they had no choice but to go back to the chicks' run to sleep on their own, protesting loudly all the way.
Outside the other big hens do bully them at times, chasing them and not letting them eat first, but they have not actually hurt them. During the day the chicks can also get freely to their own run under the shed and to the trough to eat and drink, and the mood is fairly calm. One hen got very insolent with the little ones for a while, so I shut her in a cage for a whole day. When I let her in with the others the next day she was much more polite.
With quarrelsome birds, young cockerels included, it also helps to press the bird to the ground with your hand and hold it there for a while. When it starts throwing its weight around with the others again, I do the same again. That way they accept their keeper as the leader of the flock and stop pushing so hard for that position themselves. Because bullying the others is, after all, pure struggle for rank.
