Chicks get stressed when I leave

[SummerTheAnimalGirl]

Hello! I wondered if you guys could help me. I currently have two Welsummer chicks. They both hatched yesterday. I am planning on getting 6 more chicks on Tuesday. Both chicks are healthy, playful, friendly, they are eating and drinking and pooping. The only problem is…whenever I leave both the chicks run to the edge of the brooder and start chirping super loud. And this can go on for a long time after I leave. Is this a concern? What should I do? Thank you all for helping me, I really appreciate it!

 

[azygous]

This is what chicks do. They have a deep instinct to locate and then join their brood. This is training for sticking with their flock when they old enough to do that.

Meanwhile, believe it or not, you have been designated as part of their brood/flock, and all they're doing when they loudly chirp when you disappear is to try to locate you so they can rejoin with you.

I've seen this behavior in many different forms. I brood in my run with a heating pad frame and when the chicks all go in for the night and one chick happens to still be out, she is chirping loudly and madly for the others to come back out and be with her. Ultimately, she will give up trying to convince them to come out, and she will go in and join them.

 

[SummerTheAnimalGirl]

Thank you so much for responding! Ahh, yes, that makes sense! Can I give them anything that could help? Thanks again!

 

[azygous]

There are two of them. They can make do until the other chicks join them.

 

[SummerTheAnimalGirl]

Ok thanks so much for your help!

 

[Iluveggers]

I’m a sucker….I’d waste my day sitting with them. This is why I brood in the summer when school is out. So I can be part of the flock. Lol

 

[SummerTheAnimalGirl]

I’m the same way! I just can’t let them sit there and cry.

 

[azygous]

I’m the same way! I just can’t let them sit there and cry.

Yeah. Believe me, they count on that, the little manipulators.

 

[Blooie]

Yeah. Believe me, they count on that, the little manipulators.

Truer words were never spoken!! They’ll do the same thing when they start to transition outdoors….they’ll be fine out there all day long, but when it’s time to go in for the night they’ll pile up in a corner, whether they are uncomfortable or not, and wait for their well-trained human to come out and physically put them in the coop. They don’t like the process, but it’s what they’ve trained themselves and their people to do so they won’t even try. And lights. Oh, man, lights!!! I don’t care what color the bulb is, light is light. For weeks heat lamp raised chicks have lights on 24/7. Then the first night out in the coop (or even in the house if that’s where they are when the light finally gets turned off) they’ll throw a first class royal chickie temper tantrum. And 90% of people will cave.

I have come to the conclusion that letting them train humans to give in, or to baby them, is about the most stressful and unkind thing we can do to them - and to ourselves. No critter can put a person on a horrible guilt trip like a brooder full of chicks facing transitions. It might be moving them to successively larger brooders as they grow, turning off the heat, cutting lights, putting them to bed every night, or whatever, but they are pros at getting their own way.

I’m cruel. I bring them home (or take them out of the incubator) watch them in the house for a day or two, then stick their little hineys out in the brooder pen in the outdoor run. The big, scary adults are right there with them, separated only by the wire of the pen. I see them in the morning and in the evening when I go out to do chores. They never get a heat lamp….they get a human heating pad. And they never, ever in their entire lifetimes see an artificial light of any kind. They don’t get to eat 24/7. if they get scared, they learn to self-calm. And the little stinkers absolutely thrive. I’ve been doing it this way for 7 or 8 years.