How 3 cute Bantams survived investigation and landed in my backyard :)

Hello all,
I suppose I should open with: I am a crazy animal shelter employee with good intentions and sentimentally impaired judgement.
That is how I started visiting a bunch of chickens under protective custody for cruelty investigation. ( A religious cult of some sort crossed the line and all feathery survivors were impounded in our quarantine area.) The courts take their sweet time, so we, ehm...bonded. I reserve a particularly cushioned soft spot for the chickens ever since one remarkable specimen pecked her way into my heart at a clinic I used to work for. So as the story goes, with our birds under investigation, I started bringing them meal worms at lunch breaks, talking to them in an unnaturally high pitched voice and when I caught myself scraping dirt out of the curbside rosemary planters for an improvised dust bath... I was hooked.

Our household routinely fosters/rehabilitates animals, but we never had chickens...My poor husband, trained to play along, is being a good sport about my new endeavor. So are the neighbors. Thankfully, I did my due diligence and asked their permission, because one hen already paid them all a courtesy visit, demonstrating remarkable escape skills (Oh yes, they can fly. Elegant it is not, but it sure gets them over the fence.) After some 30 minutes of team effort, flushed and uttering mild profanities, my fabulous husband managed to trap her in his unused fish net.

Knowing we have an established family of racoons, skunks and a feral cat colony in vicinity, I was beside myself with joy to have her back, safely in my arms. I held her gently up against my chest and in return, she cheerfully crapped on my work shirt. My dogs stoically cleaned that up in an unguarded moment. Putting the runaway back in the cage, hubby concluded we needed a coop big enough for them never to have to free roam on his watch. Too nerve wrecking, he said. I shrugged my shoulders. Since I am not getting my car fixed, we may as well.

And so this, my friends in madness, is day one of my urban chicken keeper-hood. I am enamored. Spacious coop online shopping as we speak...sincerely yours, RacillaTheHen

 

No, they are not quite "snuggly" yet. They probably haven´t been handled much at all. Racilla is super outgoing, fearless,and she keeps calm when I hold her, Thana is a bit of a tweeker, nervous lil thing. And Cinci (the rooster, but don´t tell anyone) is undecided on whether he likes me or not. Racilla seems to be calling the shots, so lets hope I will win his graces...( unrelated question: if I keep the coop realy dark, will it fool him to not wake up the hood at 5am? Or do they have biological clock that will laugh in the face of my dark plan?)

Overall, they are delightful. Of course, I have been glued to the cage since morning. They have not laid, although they were consistently laying in the shelter, on a concrete floor. Probably the stress of the move. I don´t mind necessarily, I don´t even know how old these guys are, they may very well be past their prime. I observed something curious today...(mind you everything about chickens will be curious for a while, I´m a greenhorn). Racilla was plucking grass and purposefully putting it on her back. Then it would all fall off and she would start again. Anyone any idea what is she doing?

Ah, never mind, she just laid one! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!