Chicken stories

We put the not-so-baby chickens in the big coop with the other birds last week. It all went well, and while the younger birds tend to huddle in a clump, there was also no bloodshed. This also meant that we weren't letting any of the birds out into the yard for a week as everyone settled.

This afternoon we decided to try letting them all out. Having access to the outside world was a first for the young birds. When we opened the pen, the older chickens all ran out, the ducks headed immediately to the pond, and the young birds headed straight for the chicken feeders in the pen because there were no big chickens near. The younger ones didn't even seem to realize the pen door was open.

Eventually some of the younger hens moved closer to the door and peered out. It took a while for one of them to be brave enough to hop over the sill. The second she did, she panicked and starting running, obviously trying to get back into the pen, but instead just ran around it, occasionally trying to enter the pen by squeezing through the wire mesh walls. Inside the pen, the rest of the young chickens ran along with her on the inside, obviously as confused as she was about how she ended up where she was. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth she ran along the back of the pen like some video game character stuck between two impediments. J. eventually decided to shoo her back to the front of the pen where she did locate the door and hopped back inside.

A couple of other brave young hens hopped out and started scratching for food. A couple even figured out how to hop out and hop in again. The vast majority of them never attempted to leave the pen, instead seeming to relish the absence of the older birds.

The few who did wander a little bit managed to find their way back at dusk with the others. This is better than the two baby birds last summer who would roost in all sorts of places on the back porch where we would have to look for them and then return them to the coop. I wasn't terribly excited about the prospect of hunting and moving sixteen birds every night as they figured it out.