After one week, it became important to move the chucklings (friends have had fun coming up with hybrid names) outdoors. So I built a brooder coop for the family. By the time the youngsters were two weeks old, they were consuming over three gallons of water a day. No kidding. I could hardly keep the waterer full! Between eager drinking and bill-smacking splashiness, the water disappeared. Here you see the brooder coop placed adjacent to the large coop, where Bess looks on and Cinnamon stands guard.
When the chucklings were two weeks old, a new owner for the babies was found, and one by one I collected the plump, warm little siblings and put them in a box. Cinnamon protested, trying to protect them, but never pecked me. Yesterday, I allowed her to jump out of the brooder coop for her first foraging jaunt around our property in many weeks. Re-integration with Bess and Vita is a little rough, but getting better today. Cinnamon has had her brood, and is resuming life as a free agent hen. 
The babies will be kept warm by a heat lamp, and by each other.
Jocelyn Curry 
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