16/7, The Great Escape

The elders are 16 weeks (maybe it's time to move to months now?) old. The girls (Kiki and Kittywhee, as far as I can tell) should be hitting puberty about now and dropping an egg for the first time. I'm checking the coop daily. On the other hand, in anyplace but California, egg laying ends in Fall and starts up again in Spring.

The babies have begun fighting. Kerrie saw them going at it, with the elders watching on the sidelines. Hope they don't lose toenails like the others.

The last few weekends I've been opening the coop door and letting the elders leave if they like, to explore the great outdoors. They didn't seem to take to it, but today they made it beyond the coop threshold for the first time. YT takes the prize as being the first to cross over. That took a lot of encouragement, food, and toys to play with to make that happen.

We went on a bike ride in the afternoon, and I left the coop door open, thinking nothing could go wrong, because it was such an effort getting them to get as far as they did. Wrong! I went into the coop just at sunset to close things up, and found 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 young guinees making quite a lot of noise, like something was bothering them. Sure enough, Kiki, the first out of the shell, was also the first up into a nearby douglass fir. She wasn't distressed though, just making the usual buckwheat, buckwheat noise as she always does. Kerrie somehow managed to coax her down, but not into the coop. We tried to corral her into the coop, but she took off and landed in the thick of the coyote brush. I gave chase, and eventually grabbed her. She seemed oddly calm, as though nothing was wrong. Considering she's never seen anything bigger than the 10x10 space she lives in, that's a bit strange.

They are still going to be confined during the week while I'm at the office. I need to spend more time with them while they get used to the great outdoors.