Please Can I Have a Treat?

"If I come sit in your lap, can I have a treat?"

"Or maybe I'll just peck at the threads of these holey jeans."

"If I look really cute can I have a treat?'

I'm training the chicks with treats. It works just as well with them as it does with dogs. The only problem is that they are picky eaters. They are curious about anything I give them, but only get excited and devour a few favorite treats. At the top of the list is a chopped up hard boiled egg. I've given them this since they were a few days old. (Adam thinks this is wrong on so many levels). Egg is their first food though. They absorb the egg sac when they are born. This provides all the nutrients they need for three days (which is why you can ship day old chicks). So eggs for chickens is like milk for us. They also will eat yogurt mixed with chick feed, but don't like it's messiness. They spend more time wiping off their faces on the grass after they are finished than they do eating it. When I gave them grapes they had more fun playing "chase the guy with the grape" than actually eating them. I throw an occasional worm in the pen and they play with it but don't eat it. They have not been interested in spinach, green beans, strawberries, or sweet potato rolls. They did devour a plate of field peas cooked with ham. And they will eat offered chickweed which is a weed with lots of nutrients, named so because it is a chicken favorite-like catnip to cats.

Anyway, in my attempt to lure them back into their pen after their nightly free range, I started to put a dish of a chopped, hardboiled egg inside the door while yelling "treats!" Rudy, who seems smarter and more aware than the girls, caught on quickly and now follows me when I go inside to get the treat, waiting by the back door for me to return. After three days of this, they all now come running when I holler "treats" and follow me straight to the pen.