I've got the Stupidest Chickens

[wegotchickens]

Well I feel really lucky. I have some sneaky chickens, and that takes brains, right?

They only had supervised free-range time for the first year of their lives, and were expected to stay in our yard. Now they are let out when we get home, and still expected to stay in our yard. And they do pretty good.
But every now and then they will wander over to the neighbor's yard. I yell "Hey! You guys! Whaddya think you're doing?" They cross back into our yard and eyeball me until my back is turned.
Then they are back into the neighbor's grass again. If I start to walk that way, though, they know the game's over and run back into the middle of our yard.

But they insist on sleeping on the perch in the middle of the run and will NOT go indoors to sleep. Even in the rain they sleep outside. So maybe sneakiness doesn't equal intelligence. I don't know.

 

[BikerBabeRules]

I can relate. I have one mutt hen who flys out of the coop every single day when I open the door (the other 50 stay in the run) and spends her entire day running around the coop trying to get back in. She's seemingly rather panicked when doing so, too. At nightfall, when all other chickens walk back into the coop, she decides she will fly up, land on the rail, and flutter into the coop to take her designated spot in the pack with the rest of them. She reminds me of Otis on Andy Griffith. You know, would come in at the endof the day, grab the key, let himself in the cell, hang the key back up and let himself out again in the morning............

 

[swampducks]

Well, after berating the stupidity of my chickens and extolling the intelligence of my guineas, last night DH and I had to net about 10 guineas off the roof of the coop and stuff them back inside.

This morning I hear the loud squawking of a guinea and it turned out we missed one (I thought one might have flown into the trees to escape the net) and he was running all around the front yard screaming his head off. Eventually, he ended up on top of the run netting from which I had a devil of a time extricating him.

Of course, they're all free ranging again so who knows what trouble I'll run into tonight. I'll bet it won't matter if I remind them the temps will be dropping into the 30s again!