My husband and I have a 100yr old house with a detached garage that isn't usable as a garage since it was made for something like an old fashioned model-t, but it is much larger than a shed....so we use part of the space as a coop. We have a flock of 4 adult chickens total. 3 are laying hens and one was a hen but is turning into a male...(whole other story there!). We recently purchased 3 additional baby chicks that are close to one week old in covered, plastic brooder tubs on a countertop. It has been raining cats and dogs out here for two days now so the girls have all been "cooped up" when normally the adult chooks are in a tractor or free range during the day.
We came home from a party tonight to find that our dumbest chicken (a gold sex link) named Sheena had escaped the grown up chicken coop area, traversed across the garage, jumped onto the countertop with clipped wings, then jumped up onto the top of the plastic brooder tubs, broke through the plastic netting covering the brooders, took a chick out (our fave chick), and killed it. She had never escaped before a day ago, and we had fixed the gap she was sneaking out of. She somehow figured out a new way to escape from her enclosure (which has walls and a netted roof). The other girls stayed in the coop. Sheena would normally just yutz about the garage if she escaped ever, and never has ever had any interest in jumping on the countertop...she is quite lazy normally.
Why on earth would this normally fat, lazy, unmotivated chicken figure out a way to Houdini from her coop, not want to check out all the other fun crap in the garage, and instead head for the countertop, break into a plastic brooder tub....just to kill a baby chick?! It seems like premeditated murder because this crazy criminal had to go through many DIFFICULT steps to get to her prey, and typically Sheena doesn't even want to waddle her bountiful behind out of the coop to forage in the yard since she is lazy. What the heck possessed her?
Are chickens usually this calculating and maniacal and murderous? I could see if we just put them out in front of her, but she had to go through lots of check and balances to get to the loot...
And, whenever the flock has ever had the opportunity to attack a mouse etc when we have been around, she doesn't join in with the flock and plays miss innocent.
What say you?
Should Sheena become "Sheena noodle soup"?
We came home from a party tonight to find that our dumbest chicken (a gold sex link) named Sheena had escaped the grown up chicken coop area, traversed across the garage, jumped onto the countertop with clipped wings, then jumped up onto the top of the plastic brooder tubs, broke through the plastic netting covering the brooders, took a chick out (our fave chick), and killed it. She had never escaped before a day ago, and we had fixed the gap she was sneaking out of. She somehow figured out a new way to escape from her enclosure (which has walls and a netted roof). The other girls stayed in the coop. Sheena would normally just yutz about the garage if she escaped ever, and never has ever had any interest in jumping on the countertop...she is quite lazy normally.
Why on earth would this normally fat, lazy, unmotivated chicken figure out a way to Houdini from her coop, not want to check out all the other fun crap in the garage, and instead head for the countertop, break into a plastic brooder tub....just to kill a baby chick?! It seems like premeditated murder because this crazy criminal had to go through many DIFFICULT steps to get to her prey, and typically Sheena doesn't even want to waddle her bountiful behind out of the coop to forage in the yard since she is lazy. What the heck possessed her?
Are chickens usually this calculating and maniacal and murderous? I could see if we just put them out in front of her, but she had to go through lots of check and balances to get to the loot...
And, whenever the flock has ever had the opportunity to attack a mouse etc when we have been around, she doesn't join in with the flock and plays miss innocent.
What say you?
Should Sheena become "Sheena noodle soup"?
