Yesterday, I watched as two of girls fought each other over the exact same laying box. Never mind that I have 36 laying boxes, and they were the only two girls in need of boxes.
It was an amusing (for me) but also frustrating (for them) battle of wits, which I don’t know who won because I gave up watching in favor of getting breakfast.
Yesterday DH, the kids and I finished up the last of our Christmas shopping. After wrapping and packaging up gift baskets for teachers and the bus driver, we headed down to the barn to collect the last of the eggs for the day, count heads and lock up the chickens for the night.
I was apprehensive because while we were busy, this was happening in the barn yard:
Abby took Pip waaaay outside the run today, and let him explore the weeds in the barnyard.
As you can see, the snow from Saturday didn’t last long. We still had a small powdering yesterday morning but by afternoon it was mostly a memory. Abby decided to show Pip the secret treasures a weed patch can hold. Personally, I think that he’d be better off looking in the spring, when there are actually bugs to find. But what do I know?
So, I was apprehensive, because while I was snapping this picture, Little Dude spotted a bigger, darker figure flying overhead, looking for God only knows what, and Pip is just small enough to snatch if the big flying shadow hungry enough.
It must not have been, because Pip was in the coop with his Momma, Papa and Aunties when we went down to lock them up.
DH came with us, and we gave the chickens an early Christmas present… a new roost for their coop.
A little back-story here, but before Thanksgiving, Dad and I clipped their wings so that we could lock them in the run on the days we go away and can’t watch them. I think I’ve mentioned in other posts that, some days the barn yard and pasture aren’t enough for them and these chickens cross the road to come looking for… I’m not sure what. Me? Little Dude?? Bugs??? Greener grass????
And while it’s less of a problem on days when someone is here to see them safely back across the road, on holidays where we might be gone it’s a huge problem. (The fence is in the planning stages now. Yay!)
But a more interesting problem, however, has risen inside the coop as a result of the wing-clip.
My girls can no longer roost in the rafters. They’ve been trying, because they like it up there. and I guess (I’ve read anyway) that the ones who roost highest up have some kind of social status in the flock. But mostly, there’s about five or six hens who really liked roosting up in the rafters.
Since Thanksgiving, they’ve all been trying to reach that Nirvana … to sad/pathetic/sometimes hilarious results. Little Dude and I have watched several go crashing into the side of the coop time and again. There’s also been some domestic squabbles about who’s sitting in which spot on top of the laying beds (there’s a shelf on top where they sleep sometimes). All this because some of the girls can’t jump up to the rafters.
So after a few nights of this, I asked DH to build them a perch they could use, halfway between the beds and the rafters. I figure if they had a shorter distance to go up, some of them could make it into the rafters and some might stay on the roost.
Dots freaking out about whatever Dh is doing.
8-foot beam on this side…
sitting on posts. Dots and Madison testing it out.
Madison found a comfy spot to sit on the new roost. She likes it.
8-foot on the other side, too.
A better picture of the beam/board it’s sitting on.
Maicey is testing this side. She spent a lot of time looking up and down and trying to decide if she could now jump across to the rafters above the windows.
I placed Dots, Madison and Maicey on the perch myself, but while I snapped pictures and helped with clean up, Penelope, Henrietta and a couple of the others made it up there themselves. By the time we left, Henrietta had found her way back into the rafters and the Promised Land. Even Dots had snuggled into a squat on the perch and closed his eyes. He usually sits in the corner on the top shelf of the beds.
There a Chick 