The Ultimate "Mother Hen"

Tary

Hatching
Jan 27, 2015
2
0
7
St. Helena, Napa Valley, CA
I've been known to preach a lot regarding the stupidity of chickens. Raised almost 100 in my life (a lot for some, small amount for my father in law) and have seen a lot of wierd behavior. These are birds that can fly, yet a 4' fence seems to contain them, and they can drown themselves in a rainstorm by looking up...with their mouths open. I may have to stop my preaching, or at least tell a tale of a very special chicken in our midst. Sunday, we had a big brea...kout (not over the 4' fence, but under it). At one point, we had 7 hens wandering around the vineyard and eventually 4 were pinned behind a neighbors shed by their barking dog. I waited patiently until dusk, assuming that they would try and get back into their coop, as putting themselves to roost is the only predictable thing they'll do. Darkness starts to come and we had 6 hens in the coop and like clockwork, the 4 trapped hens came to the back fence and showed up at the hole where they dug themselves out. Predictably, as I preach, none of them can remember how to crawl back under the fence and start getting frantic working back and forth along the fence pecking at the wire when their entrance was just inches away. Out of the blue, one of our hens (Buff Orpington in pic) comes stomping down the runway out of the coop like a mad mother, marches over to the spot where the 4 hens need to come in, goes under the fence and then comes back in as if to say "listen you stupid birds, this is how it's done, I'm tired, so get with it and lets go to bed". All 4 hens followed her under the fence and the rest is history. I can now preach that we have a very special "Mother Hen" in our hen house.
 
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That's a funny story. It is interesting, I find that chickens are not so dumb when it comes to predicting routine and letting others know what they want, but they can seem completely clueless when it comes to getting around a fence sometimes. They they think they should be able to get straight through the fence to get what they see on the other side even though the door way is a few feet away.

I bet "mother hen" was the one who lead the flock on their breakout adventure.
 
Cute story! I had a similar issue and eventually had to build a 10 foot aviary section of my yard. For some reason my birds will only escape from that one side. But they always found their way back in at night. However we have a few crazed dogs that roam our neighborhood sometimes and I didn't want them to get caught by one of those guys so I built the aviary.
 

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