As we're about to go away for a couple of weeks, our friends Ruth and Martin have kindly offered to look after the chicks - they have around 30 chickens of their own.
Here are the chicks last weekend having a bit of playtime in the utility room. Starting to look like proper chickens, no?
It's a really sunny day today - not that warm in the shade, but in the sun it does feel pretty warm, so Ollie and I just took midnight out for her first view of the outside world - in this case the front doorstep. 
Here we have all five birds strolling about in the utility room. The way they move is starting to look very authentically "chicken"! They were also
The chicks are definitely getting bigger now, in fact I don't think we'll be calling them chicks for much longer. This is Sunshine this morning - you can see a lot of feathers developing now, and she looks to be developing a classic Light Sussex pattern - white plumage with black flight feathers.
... and here are Midnight and Pig. The latter is so-called as she looks like a pigeon. Now there are five of them they certainly need cleaning out rather more often ...
So, we got 4 new chicks to make friends with Liquorice. Relations were a bit frosty for a few hours, but they have now decided they can get along. The new ones are 99% guaranteed female, although we're not sure what breed - they were described as hybrid.
Liquorice is about 10 days old now, and thriving well. However, we can't help feeling that he or she would like some company. Julie made some calls yesterday, and has found a poultry farm which has chicks at about the same age, so we're going to go and buy 4 more today. They will be sold as 99% certain girls, so if Liquorice turns out to be a boy we will still have 4, and if not, they can shuffle up a bit and we'll accommodate 5.