Yesterday as I was feeding my chickens, they all escaped, the little buggers, and then refused to go back inside their coop. I closed the door behind me, but BAC was determined to get out and basically bulldozed the door open by flying at it. So after quite a bit of attempted herding (an impossible task!) I gave up and left them to roam in my yard with my puppy. Not ideal. At all. I have been working with Jessa (the puppy) to leave my pullets alone, but I still don't trust her. She's 11 weeks old. Not trustworthy. But I was already late for church and didn't have much choice.
A couple hours later I came back to find Jessa completely ignoring my pullets and could only find 3 of the 4. I was devastated, but I half expected it. But I noticed the others weren't acting upset at all, and were just free ranging to their little hearts content. I've had a predator attack before, unfortunately, and the remaining pullets definitely were "off kilter" for several days afterwards, so I began hoping she was just hiding in a tree or under a bush or something. So I began hard core searching every possible and impossible hiding place around my yard, and even into the neighbors yard. Then I saw the cat that liked to terrorize my chicks, before we got Jessa, sleeping not 2 feet away from my fence! I chased it off, and assumed that is what happened. Jessa must have been sleeping and the terrorist cat came and ate BAC.
So after a few minutes of crying, I went to tend to my babies (I have 14 chicks, born on Valentines) And low and behold... I found BAC. I still have NO idea how she got back here!
For reference, this is the space she had to have crawled through to get back there:
Fortunately I was able to scoot the brooder over a tad and she was able to scootch out on her own. Definitely a roller coaster day! And yet another instance of BAC living up to her name.
A few moments afterwards, I was able to get them all into the coop with no problems.
I think they enjoyed being reunited. lol
A couple hours later I came back to find Jessa completely ignoring my pullets and could only find 3 of the 4. I was devastated, but I half expected it. But I noticed the others weren't acting upset at all, and were just free ranging to their little hearts content. I've had a predator attack before, unfortunately, and the remaining pullets definitely were "off kilter" for several days afterwards, so I began hoping she was just hiding in a tree or under a bush or something. So I began hard core searching every possible and impossible hiding place around my yard, and even into the neighbors yard. Then I saw the cat that liked to terrorize my chicks, before we got Jessa, sleeping not 2 feet away from my fence! I chased it off, and assumed that is what happened. Jessa must have been sleeping and the terrorist cat came and ate BAC.
So after a few minutes of crying, I went to tend to my babies (I have 14 chicks, born on Valentines) And low and behold... I found BAC. I still have NO idea how she got back here!
For reference, this is the space she had to have crawled through to get back there:
Fortunately I was able to scoot the brooder over a tad and she was able to scootch out on her own. Definitely a roller coaster day! And yet another instance of BAC living up to her name.
A few moments afterwards, I was able to get them all into the coop with no problems.
I think they enjoyed being reunited. lol
Thank you!
