Can You OUTSMART a Chicken?

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And the answer is, “Heavens NO! Are you kidding?” The species would not have continued to exist if the answer had been yes. This somewhat fragile bird is one of the slyest animals on the planet and I don’t mean that in a deceitful way. So much so that I’m surprised the chicken didn’t get the coined phrase, “As sly as a chicken,” instead of the familiar saying, “As sly as a fox!”

Why have I said this, you may wonder? My observation of chickens began a little over two years ago, but I guess you could say I had an “Ah hah moment” this past Saturday. All my thinking culminated this morning as I responded to a post about chickens laying and I thought everything I have learned “the hard way” deserved to be in an article.

The thread I read this morning was regarding “chickens squatting, but not laying and why,” by @tweetzone86, and whether or not they free ranged. With my newfound information, I just had to respond.

When I said earlier about learning things “the hard way,” I’m absolutely certain I am not the only one. I mean, “Hello, we are talking about chickens aren’t we?”

When the question was asked if the pullets free ranged, a light bulb came on in my head. “Yep, I second the question,” was my reply. The reason for my quick response? I just assumed since all my pullets had been kept under lock and key in their coop and run for months before being allowed to free range, that they would just know where their home was. Nope! Really? Yep! Some did, but not all.

A bit of history with my chickens:
I didn’t let my original flock of four free range until they were about 15 months old. Yes, you heard right, 15 months old. The only grass they ever ate was hand cut and snipped into tiny slivers to avoid the dreaded crop impaction. Oh, the many things we must worry about. My four “Originals” had been laying eggs in the coop for about nine months prior to being let out. In addition, my first four never flew over the fence into the pasture either, probably because they were older and larger, you reckon? Eggs from them were easy pickin’s for me.

However, the story has been completely different with my “littles,” the chicks I received in mid April. I began letting them out of their run at about 8 weeks old. I felt they were nicely integrated with my originals, using the “see, no touch” method, AND I needed to take down their temporary run in order to build the permanent one. That was the easy part.

Jump to the present day:
Knowing that I should be getting more eggs than I was from my 6 month old pullets, this past weekend I hung out around the coop area and just watched my birds as they went about their morning of free ranging. Sunrise was at 6:20 and they had been confined in the run for about an hour before I let them out. None of them had layed in the nest boxes yet. Several of the breeds I have now can F-L-Y and they also like the goodies that are on the pasture side of the fence. Think horses, et al. :sick

Well, it didn’t take long before I noticed my Australorp, Barbie, (... on the grill, ;), get it?) slowly approaching the overgrown base of a HUGE oak tree. Yeah, you’ve seen these; briars and honeysuckle and poison oak and broken branches and UGH, outside the chicken yard, over in the pasture. Have you ever watched a hen approaching the nest to lay? If you have, you know how slowly they creep up to the nest and then enter the nest even more slowly. Statues that actually move a tad, that’s a pullet/hen. They’ve got to make sure nothing sees them, right? Well, I noticed her approaching the tree like a hen approaches a nest box. “Noooooooo!” I hollered. “I know that approach. I know what you’re thinking.” I continued to watch and that darn bird disappeared into the area I didn’t want her to. :eek:

You $@#% bird was all I could think so off I headed to retrieve her. In that deep, dark recess she called a safe place, she smugly sat on a little nest-looking bed of sticks and leaves. I took my little rake and moved several “things” out of my way in order to get her. I didn’t have my phone at the time or I’d have taken a picture. I picked up this gorgeous black bird with the reddest of red combs and was shocked to see six beautiful, but nasty looking, pullets’ eggs. Much to my dismay, it was evident that several birds had used this same nest. I reached in and got the eggs and carried her clucking, fuzzy butt back to the coop. Yes, clucking, no other word intended, here. She clucked the entire way. She was mad! I was mad! I placed her in a coop nest box where she stayed, oh, about 30 seconds, before she headed back to her empty nest at the base of the tree. I let her go.
(The dogs ate the nasty looking eggs.)
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About an hour later I went back out to look for her egg. No egg was in the nest and what was worse was I couldn’t find Barbie. Had she already hunted for and made another nest, one I couldn’t find? I had given up and went back to the coop. That crazy bird was back in the coop, in a nest box. :he Later that morning, I searched high and low looking for more “illegal” nests. :lau I didn’t find any, but I know they’re out there.

After this roller coaster of emotion came to a semi-slow down, I decided it would be best if these birds were locked in the coop/run until about 3:30ish, every day, for several weeks. I can be brutal if I’m sent round and round hunting eggs. :mad: No more early morning ranging until they know where to lay. I say that, but I’m sure some will go straight back to their rogue way of life, laying in the dark confines of “the other side!”

Then today, to-day, as I walked up to the coop, something caught my eye. That something looked like an egg. That something was an egg. Eight of them.
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Underneath a 2x2 pallet I had set up as a temporary step to the back door, inside the run, was another nest! Of the eggs, five were gorgeous terra-cotta colored Welsummer and Marans eggs. Whhaaatttt? I wondered why they weren’t laying yet. :confused:
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Where did I go wrong? These pullets have a brand new coop, with plenty of brand new nest boxes, made to the exact specifications that nest boxes should be. I have failed!

However, I don’t have to hide to make a nest, and be sly about entering it like my birds. Instinct has given them instructions that I cannot control, but I’m going to try, somewhat. :fl I blocked the entrance to the “pallet nest” and added three additional nest boxes: one in the run (a very small dog house filled with pine shavings), and two inside the coop under the droppings board (old buckets), both weighted down and filled with pine shavings and Flock Fresh.
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And you guessed it, they all partook of the fresh buffet I put out for them. Even the blurred Leghorn. :gig

Now, I’m the impatient one who wants to know things before they happen and why they happen. But, I have realized some things may just take time and some things we just have to learn on our own. Why? Because chickens have soooo many idiosyncrasies there’s no way they can all be captured, discussed and understood.

Maybe it will just take time.
About author
Mimi13
I am the wife of one husband, mother of two sons, grandmother of three boys, keeper of four chickens, five cats, six horses, and seven dogs. I love my family, animals and the good old outdoors.

Two years ago I was lucky enough to “retire” to be a stay-at-home Mimi to keep my third grandson, several months before he was born. It was at this time I talked my husband into getting just a “few” chickens. After all, the eggs he would be eating would be so much better for him, right? Well, he agreed and the rest is blissful history. I really knew nothing about chickens, so I feverishly began reading and watching anything I could get my hands on, which is what led me to BYC.

I purchased my first little coop, and I stress little, and waited with great anticipation the arrival date of my first feathered babies, six little sweeties. I went to pick up the little fuzzy butts on April 1, 2016. Two buff Orpingtons, Butter and Biscuit; a Silver Laced Wyandotte, Wynnie; a Golden Laced Wyandotte, Goldie; a Red Star, Penny; and an Amber Link, Millie. Much to my dismay, two of my “pullets” began crowing one day. Oops! Luckily the breeder took both back, because my little coop never would have held six grown birds.

At the present time I am building my dream coop, with hours invested in looking at BYC coops, in anticipation of my littles coming April, 2018. I can’t wait.

ETA: I now have my coop/run built and my second “flock” of chickens. Life is grand!

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No, you are not going to outsmart them. Mine keep me guessing all of the time. They have a perfectly good set of nest boxes on one wall. They found an unused feed bucket that they liked in an empty horse stall and I finally moved that to their "stall". They used that daily. Then I noticed that they would try to double up in it if one didn't get out quick enough. So I put a cardboard box on the shelf behind it and left the flap up on the outer side for them to "hide". Put a couple of them in, they promptly got out. Next day, 2 eggs in it... day after that all 4 eggs are in it... nobody wants anything to do with the bucket now. Now they wait in line (or double up) for the cardboard box... Go figure. :he:D
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Mimi13
Mimi13
Oh my lord, that is hilarious and I can see that happening. So much for the money you spent on the “real” nest boxes. I don’t know why coop plans don’t just leave the nest boxes off and say to add old buckets or boxes. Problem solved. Dang chickens.
I too just had this same experience. Each nest I have found in the last 3 days has had a minimum of 14 eggs. My newly laying Easter Eggers are HOARDERS! We too have set up "bait" nests inside the yard and just outside the coop. As of today they are still free ranging all day, but this may change for a while as well. We keep several roosters within the flock and that is my main worry having then locked down in their yard all day. I don't have rooster problems now....and don't want to start by forcing confinement.
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Mimi13
Those nests are amazing. A nest that has truly been made by the bird is so beautiful. Your pics make me want to set up nests in the coop that look like homemade nests. I wish I had taken a picture of the first one I found.
Chickens will be chickens. They never fail to surprise and always have something new for you. This is a great story about how chickens can get the best of us.
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I went through this myself. My hens started laying under the coop in the hardest to reach spot that required me or my wife to lay on the ground and slither under the coop to reach the eggs - I eventually figured out how to use a garden hoe to reach them even. They just would not lay in the nesting boxes. Ceramic eggs and lockdown in the coop fixed that fairly easily - had I only figured that out prior to spending nearly two months painfully collecting eggs from under the coop. That was during the summer. Now just recently we let the chickens out of their run into the fenced in garden the run connects to so they could eat weeds and insects and spread plenty of fertilizer (the natural chicken kind). The chickens decided to carve a nest out of a compost pile of weeds and pulled garden plants (fall cleaning) in the garden. It was two days of no eggs in the nesting boxes that caused me to search everywhere for a rogue nest, and then there it was perfectly (and beautifully I must say) carved into the side of our compost pile atop a garden bed we cleared out. That was Friday. They have been confined again to the coop and run now, although I just found another egg in the rogue nest yesterday - one of the hens has figured out how to get out of the run and back! :barnieIt's 6ft fencing on all sides of the run. The 6 ft gate into the run has 4" gaps between the 4" wide pickets and only the lower half is covered in wire. I have seen our Gold Laced Wyandotte, Goldie, jump and squeeze herself trough the pickets before. I suspect she is the one who got out and went back in. :he So I guess I'm hanging some more wire on the gate this weekend.
 
I went through this myself. My hens started laying under the coop in the hardest to reach spot that required me or my wife to lay on the ground and slither under the coop to reach the eggs - I eventually figured out how to use a garden hoe to reach them even. They just would not lay in the nesting boxes. Ceramic eggs and lockdown in the coop fixed that fairly easily - had I only figured that out prior to spending nearly two months painfully collecting eggs from under the coop. That was during the summer. Now just recently we let the chickens out of their run into the fenced in garden the run connects to so they could eat weeds and insects and spread plenty of fertilizer (the natural chicken kind). The chickens decided to carve a nest out of a compost pile of weeds and pulled garden plants (fall cleaning) in the garden. It was two days of no eggs in the nesting boxes that caused me to search everywhere for a rogue nest, and then there it was perfectly (and beautifully I must say) carved into the side of our compost pile atop a garden bed we cleared out. That was Friday. They have been confined again to the coop and run now, although I just found another egg in the rogue nest yesterday - one of the hens has figured out how to get out of the run and back! :barnieIt's 6ft fencing on all sides of the run. The 6 ft gate into the run has 4" gaps between the 4" wide pickets and only the lower half is covered in wire. I have seen our Gold Laced Wyandotte, Goldie, jump and squeeze herself trough the pickets before. I suspect she is the one who got out and went back in. :he So I guess I'm hanging some more wire on the gate this weekend.
It is amazing to watch chickens behave exactly as God made them. And just how hard they work at it.

I have a GLW named Goldie too.
 
I went through this myself. My hens started laying under the coop in the hardest to reach spot that required me or my wife to lay on the ground and slither under the coop to reach the eggs - I eventually figured out how to use a garden hoe to reach them even. They just would not lay in the nesting boxes. Ceramic eggs and lockdown in the coop fixed that fairly easily - had I only figured that out prior to spending nearly two months painfully collecting eggs from under the coop. That was during the summer. Now just recently we let the chickens out of their run into the fenced in garden the run connects to so they could eat weeds and insects and spread plenty of fertilizer (the natural chicken kind). The chickens decided to carve a nest out of a compost pile of weeds and pulled garden plants (fall cleaning) in the garden. It was two days of no eggs in the nesting boxes that caused me to search everywhere for a rogue nest, and then there it was perfectly (and beautifully I must say) carved into the side of our compost pile atop a garden bed we cleared out. That was Friday. They have been confined again to the coop and run now, although I just found another egg in the rogue nest yesterday - one of the hens has figured out how to get out of the run and back! :barnieIt's 6ft fencing on all sides of the run. The 6 ft gate into the run has 4" gaps between the 4" wide pickets and only the lower half is covered in wire. I have seen our Gold Laced Wyandotte, Goldie, jump and squeeze herself trough the pickets before. I suspect she is the one who got out and went back in. :he So I guess I'm hanging some more wire on the gate this weekend.
Goldie is a very fit name for a GLW. We also have a Speckled Sussex named Bear. My son (going on 2 now) enjoys watching a cartoon 'Goldie and Bear' based on the old fable. That's where the names came from. We are from from creative with our names. We also have a chicken named A'Hole, pronounced ay-hole-lay. She decided at an early age to peck not only the other hens but us as well. She was named @$$home and then I cleaned it up because I didn't want to say that word instinct of my son. LOL!
 
I went through this myself. My hens started laying under the coop in the hardest to reach spot that required me or my wife to lay on the ground and slither under the coop to reach the eggs - I eventually figured out how to use a garden hoe to reach them even. They just would not lay in the nesting boxes. Ceramic eggs and lockdown in the coop fixed that fairly easily - had I only figured that out prior to spending nearly two months painfully collecting eggs from under the coop. That was during the summer. Now just recently we let the chickens out of their run into the fenced in garden the run connects to so they could eat weeds and insects and spread plenty of fertilizer (the natural chicken kind). The chickens decided to carve a nest out of a compost pile of weeds and pulled garden plants (fall cleaning) in the garden. It was two days of no eggs in the nesting boxes that caused me to search everywhere for a rogue nest, and then there it was perfectly (and beautifully I must say) carved into the side of our compost pile atop a garden bed we cleared out. That was Friday. They have been confined again to the coop and run now, although I just found another egg in the rogue nest yesterday - one of the hens has figured out how to get out of the run and back! :barnieIt's 6ft fencing on all sides of the run. The 6 ft gate into the run has 4" gaps between the 4" wide pickets and only the lower half is covered in wire. I have seen our Gold Laced Wyandotte, Goldie, jump and squeeze herself trough the pickets before. I suspect she is the one who got out and went back in. :he So I guess I'm hanging some more wire on the gate this weekend.
Oh my goodness, we watch Goldie and Bear here as well. And I absolutely LOVE A’Holé. I have a couple of birds that name would fit. I may have to steal that one. Too cute! Thanks for sharing.
 
Thanks for the article. Those chickies do keep us on our toes, don't they! Do you have any pictures of your dream coop? Would love to see them.
 
Thanks for the article. Those chickies do keep us on our toes, don't they! Do you have any pictures of your dream coop? Would love to see them.
Well, I haven’t listed it under Coop Construction but I did post pictures in My Albums. Of course I’m still not finished, so I add new pictures to it every once in a while.
 
Haha I've found nests so old the eggs were bleached white or sometimes dry inside. The only thing that really works is fake eggs in the CORRECT nests ;)
 
Haha I've found nests so old the eggs were bleached white or sometimes dry inside. The only thing that really works is fake eggs in the CORRECT nests ;)
 
I went through this myself. My hens started laying under the coop in the hardest to reach spot that required me or my wife to lay on the ground and slither under the coop to reach the eggs - I eventually figured out how to use a garden hoe to reach them even. They just would not lay in the nesting boxes. Ceramic eggs and lockdown in the coop fixed that fairly easily - had I only figured that out prior to spending nearly two months painfully collecting eggs from under the coop. That was during the summer. Now just recently we let the chickens out of their run into the fenced in garden the run connects to so they could eat weeds and insects and spread plenty of fertilizer (the natural chicken kind). The chickens decided to carve a nest out of a compost pile of weeds and pulled garden plants (fall cleaning) in the garden. It was two days of no eggs in the nesting boxes that caused me to search everywhere for a rogue nest, and then there it was perfectly (and beautifully I must say) carved into the side of our compost pile atop a garden bed we cleared out. That was Friday. They have been confined again to the coop and run now, although I just found another egg in the rogue nest yesterday - one of the hens has figured out how to get out of the run and back! :barnieIt's 6ft fencing on all sides of the run. The 6 ft gate into the run has 4" gaps between the 4" wide pickets and only the lower half is covered in wire. I have seen our Gold Laced Wyandotte, Goldie, jump and squeeze herself trough the pickets before. I suspect she is the one who got out and went back in. :he So I guess I'm hanging some more wire on the gate this weekend.
For those hard to reach eggs I use a modified golf ball picker upper ( a tool for those who land in the water trap) it’s a little plastic ring on a light extending pole, with a bit of practice it’s amazing for scooping eggs
 

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