Chickens do not care for change.

Well, the baby chicks are growing and growing. They no longer fit in their little brooder house, merely sleep on the edges of the roof each evening. I would lock them out of their fenced area entirely, except that they really still need the special growth feed for babies. The older chickens LOVE the baby feed, but it makes them get fat and die, so I try to keep batches of birds separated as long as I can manage. Right now I have the feed inside their brooder house and the opening is too small for the big birds to get through.
The main problem with this arrangement is that they are utterly vulnerable to any predator who can climb over a chicken wire fence. They are perched on TOP of a house, not locked up safely INSIDE a house.

Two weeks ago, My children and I gently scooped up each and every baby and relocated them inside the main henhouse. It took a little while (there are around 40 of them) and they really didn't like it. But then we were able to lock them in safely. The next day, half of them had somehow escaped their new home and had returned to the baby area.  So that night we again gently transfered them. And the next. Each time, reinforcing the doorways and fencing keeping them in.  On the fourth morning, there were three dead chicks with their heads off. And a few scattered eggs in the chicken yard with neat holes eaten out of one side.  Yikes.   So we set up our live trap and put up our Nite Guard lights (which flash red lights, mimicking a predator's eyes), but have so far had no luck.  So the babies sleep on their baby house.  And for now, I have given up.

In other news, Mama Hen and her four chicks are still sleeping outside of the chicken yard and managing perfectly well.
I wonder just how much management I SHOULD be providing these chickens, anyway.

Boy, I hate finding body parts though.....  Yucky.  You would too.

Still selling out at the farmer's market like hotcakes in under two hours, so I don't expect I'll be giving up on keeping chickens any time soon. Besides, I love my girls. They make sure I never get bored.