Keeping Chickens

Cream Legbars

Well our cream legbars chicks have grown and are now I suppose really classed as cream legbar pullets! All we’re waiting for now is the first appearance of ‘blue’ pullet eggs!

Cream Legbars

We have managed to ‘keep’ all of the cream legbar chicks that we had as ‘day olds’ (as detailed on the keeping chickens post on the 11th April) and they’re now getting close to being 19 weeks old.

We moved the cream legbar chicks from the utility room after about three weeks, as they needed a little more room than a large cardboard box, and transferred them to a shed we have close to the main chicken run.

We have lighting and electricity in the shed and although it was mid may managed to keep the baby cream legbars warm using a ‘reptile’ light that we hooked up in the shed.

We fed the baby cream legbars on chick crumb for the first 8 weeks, before moving them on to grower pellets

We slowly reduced the temperature of the reptile light as they developed feathers, until the baby cream legbars chicks got used to being at ‘normal’ temperature and as soon as they started looking like ‘real’ chickens, we moved the baby cream legbars to a spare chicken house that has a ‘downstairs’ run.

Cream Legbar

We put the chicken house that we moved the baby cream legbars in to next to the main chicken run, so that our ‘older’ girls and the new cream legbars could ‘get to know’ each other…

After a couple of weeks, we started opening the baby cream legbars house and giving them the run of the garden with the big girls whilst we did chicken house chores – such as cleaning them out etc. The baby cream legbars at first even though their door was open didn’t venture out of their chicken house. They just stretched their heads out and pecked at the grass.

Of course, the big girls wanted to ‘get to know them better’ and a few times we had to remove our two Isa Browns and French Maran from the cream legbars’ house! But after a couple of weeks the cream legbars and the older girls when allowed out together made a large flock and methodically went round the garden together searching for creepy crawlies and digging through the compost heap.

So a couple of weeks back we decided to take the plunge and introduce the cream legbars to the main chicken run and house. Surprisingly – apart from a little squawking and a few pecks from our matriarch Isa Brown (Ginger), things seem to have gone well.

Cream Legbar - French Maran - Isa Brown

Oddly the cream legbars want to roost at night on top of the chicken house. Perhaps there is still a little bit of a heirachy issue going on, but we go in at dusk and physically remove them from the roof and put them in the house.

So, all being well it looks like we’ve succesfully doubled the size of our flock and introduced the new cream legbars to our old girls.

All we’re waiting for now is some of those pastel coloured blue eggs and there’ll be another post as soon as we get some. By the look of a couple of the cream legbars, the wait shouldn’t be too long!

Cream Legbars

Related posts:

1. Baby Chicks
2. New Chicken Coop
3. Buy Organic Chicken Feed
4. Walking In Circles – A Song About The Sad Life Of A Battery Hen
5. Battery Hen Song – Walking In Circles – Interview With Phillip Lee Woolf