The Christening of the Chicks

Our little chicks are doing great. As you can see they are losing their down and we are getting a glimpse of what their coloring will be upon henhood. It's been warm enough on some days that I've taken them out from under the heat lamp and brought the out to the backyard for short stretches. They seem a little anxious being outside; for the most part they just stand, looking around.
Though not shown in the picture (not the food, anyway), I've had to elevate their food and water. They were kicking so much of the pine shavings into it they couldn't get to the food they covered, and the shavings clogged up the water- we were having to clean out the waterer every couple of hours.
Also, I think we've settled on some names.  Felix thought up both of them: the Rhode Island Red is Cheepy, and the Barred Rock is Strong Chicken.

Simulpost: Barred Rock and R.I. Red (with bonus material)

I am putting together our first ever simulpost; an event in which one post appears simultaneously on two blogs.  This idea was given to me from my memory of a "simulcast" of some bygone Olympics on different channels.  Actually, I don't really remember if that did, in fact, happen. Anyway this post will appear on Our Felix, and Los Pollos Dinamicos.

So what occasion is so big it justifies two blogs? We got two more chicks; a Barred Plymouth Rock (the black chick), and a Rhode Island Red (the red chick). Currently we are keeping the chicks in a large box in the dining room. We will keep them here for about another week before we move them into the garage. Because of the rat problem we had in the past, I built a tractor to cover the chicks' box at night when we move them to the garage. It's really just a precaution. When the chicks are a little older, we'll be able to take them out in the yard under the protection of the tractor. I'll include a picture of it in a future post.
Felix adores the chicks and has been spending a lot of time holding them or watching them.  We will know when Felix has picked up one of the chicks because the chick remaining in the box will cheep until her friend gets returned.

I don't know how Pip, Stripe, and Horace feel about the little additions, I haven't asked them.  I suppose "deal with it" is what I'd tell them if they had an issue with it.  Though my three girls are good layers, we seem to be averaging about 17 eggs a week.  We got lucky in a way in that each of them lay different color eggshells; we easily track how well each is producing.  My understanding with the two breeds we just picked up, they will produce brown eggshells, I imagine similar to Stripe.  I notice some variation in shading in each of our layer's eggs, I'm thinking that will probably make it unlikely that we will be able to distinguish the eggs.
As for names for our babies, we haven't decided yet for certain.  The Rhode Island Red, Felix considers his.  He has gone between Cheepy and Strong Chicken and may settle on both to make a very long name.  The Barred Rock is a breed I wanted to get last year but it wasn't available at that time.  I don't have any ideas though Felix had referred to her as Speedy at one time.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Prior to the chicks arrival, Renae emailed me a picture of what she thought would be Felix's dream of what our chicks would look like: