Guess What? Chicken Butt!
So as we've been enjoying our chicks for the last week, we have also, of necessity, come a little obsessed with their butts. While that doesn't necessarily sound healthy (in a Freudian sense) for us, it's important for the birds. We have to check their "vents" (that's chicken-speak for, um, sphincter) to make sure that they don't have poop stuck to them. If they do and it dries, it can glue their butts shut. That sounds kind of hilarious in the abstract, but it can kill your chick if you don't take care of it. So we have found ourselves making a nightly inspection of everyone's rear end, and using a damp towel to soften and then pull crap off of their butts. Poor Sally seemed to have kind of an issue with this for a couple days, and Kirk felt bad when he pulled off a bunch of her fluff once, but it's better than death. I think they might be big enough to be past this issue now, though, as we've had a couple nights of clean-as-a-whistl...