The chicks are really growing up...going from little down puffs to feathery ladies in what seems like only a couple of weeks?
Here is a photo of their new Bamboo Pirate Chickie Raft in progress (yay!) and some of their current D-Lux cardboard and wire cabin. One of The Vultures voices is slowly changing from little bird chirps, to the beginning of a bawc sound, but still mainly little sweet birdie chirps. 
We've only heard a few isolated attempts. It's hard to really imagine them clucking, much less laying eggs... Here they are getting a brief visit, as the little ones are getting bigger and want a patio, too.
They love greens and they all get completely wired up at the sight of us in the hopes we have some. Teaching them to be good, proper foraging ladies out in the wild backyard. We have tried letting them together but it's still a little alarming, so we're mainly letting them be separate and hope they'll get along when they move out in a week or two and have a lot more space. The little trio of Banti (the Bantam), PJ (the Barred Rock, black and white stripes named after lady rocker PJ Harvey) and Lima (a Peruvian Araucana named after the capital of.. Peru) want their own Le Patio. The Vultures have a lot to discuss amongst themselves right now and want their patio privacy.
We've added on to their housing a number of times now. It started out with the two Australorp chicks while waiting for the feed store to get some Araucana chicks. The Aussies or The Vultures, as they've come to be known, now that we have the younger three are bigger, look like baby vultures (in our imaginations) and are currently a bit inconsiderate about their new buddies or it's just that their reptile feet and sharps claws are already as big as the little chicks soft downy heads and that's scary. So when it was just the two, we started them in the galvanized tub with a chicken wire top in the office. Then the three younger ones came and we made a divided 2h x 4w x 2d box. The cats were banished to the porch at night and when we were gone just in case and we were lulled to sleep by lots of little bird chattings every night. Then when it was warm enough, we took the office back and moved them out on the sun porch and the cats switched places and seemed to realize they missed us. We added on Le Patio for The Vultures and gave more interior space to the little chicks who still needed more enclosed warmth and then now that they are bigger, they demanded their own private patio (not pictured, but a nifty wire bike basket turned and attached sideways).
And we've begun the raft as our version of a mobile "chicken tractor" which can be moved around the yard and garden beds for foraging, mowing and fertilizing. After thinking through other designs and trying to find a weather appropriate (damp winter), secure and inexpensive plan that would give them some height and room to enjoy, we decided to try to use some of the bamboo growing on the north side of our house. We thought about a curved structure and different heights and settled on making one we could walk in half of for cleaning and gathering eggs, which they can also hop and fly a bit in and a lower portion to peck around in. We're going to do hardware cloth on every side but the bottom to keep the predators out and chicken wire on the bottom, to keep animals from borrowing up and under or just lifting it up since it will be so lightweight. Here's a lashing detail and The Puff guarding the ladies' feed.
