Silence Is Not Golden Here

The lady should be coming this evening for the 23 birds. That will leave me with 8 layers and 7 Blue Cochins at POL, plus my breeding hens.

If my count is right, that leaves me with 93 birds, 25+ of which have been identified as cockerels. More of the number are too little to sex yet. I think I'll get close to my goal before winter sets in.

Which means, at one point, I was up to 140 birds.:th
 
Looks good. We had to fence in 1/4 acre about a year ago after a neighbor’s adult children’s dogs came onto our 30 acres & attacked our chickens. At first the chickens had an attitude like “1/4 acre, are you kidding us? We can’t live this way!” There was a lot of flying over the fence at first but after a couple of clipped wings, they decided they’d better keep their fluffy butts inside.

Only one has flown over the fence so far, Kes, my mostly white EE. And even then she paced next to the fence trying to get back to her flock... The turkeys are racing around and singing, they're so happy to be out of the coop. They're tied for funniest with the one Welsummer who hasn't figured out how to get out of the coop yet... She'll pace back and forth at the wire wall, and when she gets to the open door, she looks panicked and turns around!
 
Only one has flown over the fence so far, Kes, my mostly white EE. And even then she paced next to the fence trying to get back to her flock... The turkeys are racing around and singing, they're so happy to be out of the coop. They're tied for funniest with the one Welsummer who hasn't figured out how to get out of the coop yet... She'll pace back and forth at the wire wall, and when she gets to the open door, she looks panicked and turns around!
:lau
 
Only one has flown over the fence so far, Kes, my mostly white EE. And even then she paced next to the fence trying to get back to her flock... The turkeys are racing around and singing, they're so happy to be out of the coop. They're tied for funniest with the one Welsummer who hasn't figured out how to get out of the coop yet... She'll pace back and forth at the wire wall, and when she gets to the open door, she looks panicked and turns around!

This morning for the first time I sat out with the two-week-old muttly chicks and opened up the pen so they could come out and see the Big Bird run a bit. Of the eight, six boiled right out and started going insane, flapping around, playing, racing in circles and digging in dirt.

The smallest - doing just fine, now that it's back on vitamin water, alert, active, feathering in, but still not growing the way the rest are - had no interest in going out. I'd just put the ice tub in, and she was camped out on top of it soaking up some cool.

Her look-alike, with the tag on her jaw, was racing back and forth at the front. There's about five inches between the bottom of the pen and the bottom of the door that was open, all of it wire so they can see in, and the other birds can see out. About ten minutes, peeping and running back and forth frantically while the rest of the birds climbed in and out with no problem. She... might be a bit slow.

Then she sat up straight to let out a really loud, angry PEEEEP!!! about not being able to get out with the rest... and saw out the open door. Stood there looking at the other birds, squatted back down to look at them through the wire, stood up so she could see out the open door again, and it was like a light switch got flipped on. She realized she could get out the same way they'd been going in and out over the top of her! Guess who was doing the most racing around in circles and bumping chests, once she figured it out... and she's the second-to-smallest.
 

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