No peek this time, Extracted, forced integration

Yesterday was my 6 month dermatology check up.  Since I have had basal cell skin cancer cut off over a half dozen spots on my body I have to get checked out pretty often.  These appointments involve me stripping down to my underwear and having my skin examined under a bright light.  The only spot that I mentioned to him that felt odd was a dry patch between my shoulder blades.  He said it did not look like anything cancerous.  I told him that I do regular barbell squats and I wondered if what I was feeling was the end result of the bar grinding into the area.  He said that was the likely culprit.  I was surprised and pleased that this appointment for some reason did not include pulling my boxers open to take a glance at the skin in those areas.

Last night I took another shot at pulling one of the rollers out of the patio slider.  It was a bit tougher than I thought it should be but I eventually got one out.   I then turned to Amazon, looking for replacements.  I quickly discovered there are MANY varieties of door rollers.  Not only did I need to find something that looked the same, it had to have the same measurements.  It took quite while to find what appeared to be an exact match but I finally did so.  Four new rollers should be arriving Friday courtesy of free Amazon Prime 2 day shipping.

Very soon we are going to be integrating the 5, week younger chicks with the 6 older ones.  The plan is to let them all hang in the chicken run in the garage for a couple weeks until we move them outside to the chicken tractor.  Of course this integration has to be closely monitored to make sure none of the smaller chicks are beat up on by the older birds.

The six older chicks seem to have very little issues in their pecking order, everyone seems to get along.  The five youngsters seem to have more issues, perhaps partially due to the cramped living quarters that have been in. Jaina, the cornish hen is a pig.  She literally will eat non-stop if you let her.  She is almost double the size of the other chicks in her group.  She has no problem throwing her weight around, often plowing over the smaller chicks if she feels like it.

Stephy, the most visually interesting chick of them all is very aggressive and energetic.  She seems to enjoy jumping on top of the heads of the other chicks randomly.  She is an adept jumper/flapper.  This morning she was able to get her head over the edge of the bin on one attempt.

Pumpkin is my favorite chick out of all 11.  She is one of the smallest but also the most docile and friendly.  If I put my hand into the bin palm up in front of her she will hop on without issue.  I can then just let her perch on my hand on my lap for as long as I want, she is quite content as long as we stay within close proximity of the rest of the chicks.  For whatever reason all of the chicks get freaked out if they are taken too far away from the rest of the flock.

Take a peek at the next blog post too.