I'm really happy to report that after their first night of traumatic freedom, the cornish cross chicks are now enjoying a delightful quality of life in the pasture. The 200 remaining almost-chickens are exploring the grass, pecking around, and definitely having a lovely time. The above chick is clearly reveling in the distant beauty of Basalt Mountain (that's an awestruck expression if ever I've seen one!)

Here's some of the flock relaxing by the snack bar in their shady cabana. We're having a heck of a time keeping that snack bar fully stocked though; these guys are going through forty pounds of feed a day! Still, they're definitely much cuter when not accompanied by the stench of their chick stalls, and they have grown into their gangly feet and filled out with feathers a bit so they're nearly pretty.

To save time and labor filling their waterers twice a day (gorging on chick feed makes 'um thirsty), I created a water gap when I moved the electric fencing by repositioning the pen over a wet ditch. These chicks are nothing if not brainless (I'm certain they've long since shit out any intelligence), and were threatening to dehydrate and die as not a one followed my trail of waterers to the fourth one floating in the ditch. I attempted some training with the carrot and stick method by slowly walking a waterer to the ditch and leading a small group of thirsty chicks (foolishly thinking they had capacity for connecting the journey to the drink and later leading their comrades - hah!). When this was clearly failing, I got a tad frustrated and began grabbing any chicks trying to drink out of a waterer and tossing them into the ditch. Still, not a trace of learning, and a not a sole returning to the ditch after their initial drink. Arrrrgh! Their stupidity would be the death of them. Then - Aha! - I realized that if I simply removed all waterers (they were just standing by the empty ones waiting for Poseidon to refill them rather than hunting for a better source), and lifted one on a stump to make it easily visible in the middle of the ditch, they would head in the right direction, find they were standing in the water, and come to the correct conclusion that water now comes from the ground and not a galvanized cylinder...

TaDa!