i have three chickens who have never flown so i just assumed mabye they couldn't. their breed, their weight, whatever. but, amazingly, i looked out tonight at sunset after the two flying chickens had gone to where they always go to sleep in the tree. bossy chicken was trying to follow them. maybe because the leaves have dropped off the tree now so she can see where the others go? i don't know. anyway. she flew up on the lower fence. then spent about five minutes contemplating the short flight/jump to the taller fence just under the tree. she finally decided against it, but last i saw her she was still on the lower fence considering things. i went out later to see if she had made it up into the tree but didn't see her. so she must have decided to go roost in the sticks on the ground. it was so amazing to see her fly. you could tell it was like one of those,,,,,,,,,,,oooooooohooooooooooohoooooooooh. i was thinking i wanted to do taht, but uh, gee didnt' know i could. i was thinking since she is bossy chicken, maybe her main intent was to scale the tree to get the flyining chickens into the coop where they belong! or some such. maybe she only flew by accident on her way to go yell at them.
I loved your story! I love to watch my chickens and try to figure what they are up to- I think that they lower my bloodpressure and at the very least - entertain me and make me laugh! When my girls are going to go up another level on the roost they have the funniest tilt in their heads-as if one eye might give more information than the other! Thank you for sharinig your story!
yes. i would be a homicidal maniac if i didn't have the animals to watch and lower blood pressure. now i am just a regular old maniac. doesnt' seem to be a law against that.
The whole chickens in trees thing makes me laugh!! I have never seen that! Mine are penned and cooped with no escape into the trees possible, thank goodness or I would be calling the fire department to get them down, lol!!
When we first began turning our current flock out they would head for the trees at night instead of the coop- I would have to put the head lamp on and go out and "pick chickens" out of the trees and put them in the hen house! After a week of this -they caught on and went right into the coop. Last year we trapped a racoon and we have great horned owls so they really need to be locked up at night.
This made me think of my little bantam mille fleur. My bossy sebright was going stir crazy in the coop. It had snowed quite a bit. I opened the pop hole and my sebright FLEW out of there. She didn't even wait for me to put up the steps. By the time I had put up the step, my mille came half way down, took a look at the snow, "thought" for a few moments and carefully turned around and went back inside. A second later, she came back out and did the same thing! She wanted to be out with her bossy sister, but there was NO WAY she was going out in that white stuff! It just cracked me up to see her "thinking" for a fraction of a second!