Life is confusing enough when you’re going through home renovations.
Especially so if you’re a chicken.
We’re somehow down to two hens. It’s been a terrible year for accidents, predators and mysterious disappearances. The chicken coop has long been in need of a rebuild, and as they say, there’s no time like the present.
Plus, if we get it done soon, there’s still time to raise some chicks so they’d be big and feathery enough to be warm by the time cold weather returns.
It seemed simple enough: While we tore down and rebuilt the big coop, the two hens could stay in the adjoining coop overnight.
That is, unless you’re a bird brain.
That smaller adjoining coop is great for when we have to separate chickens, such as the case of sickness quarantine or raising chicks or providing a temporary home for some stray animal here or there (we hosted a wandering duck a couple of years ago). When the little coop is not in use for those reasons, we open the partition between the two coops so all the chickens could use it.
Since they wander around free during the day (hence the mysterious disappearances), they don’t bother going in there too often, other than one of them apparently likes to lay eggs in there.
We took down the fencing and chicken wire of the outer area of the big coop, leaving just the enclosed roosting coop. However, we closed the little door to it so they’d go into the small coop for the night. We closed the partition, set the food and water in there and left the big people-sized door open.
They had no problem going in and out of there during the day for food. It’s when night fell that the problems began.
As twilight settled over, however, they went to the big coop, first walking around the missing fence area in apparent surprise. Then they hopped up onto the ledge they normally use to get into the roosting area, but the glass door (made from a window on its side), they stopped.
They’d hop down, then hop up again. After several tries with no luck, they wandered away.
Chickens go to roost before dark, so they’d have to settle soon.
Instead, they wandered aimlessly around the yard awhile, then returned.
Again, they stood in front of the glass door. Nothing had changed.
They’d go into the little coop, but only one at a time. The black one even walked into the small coop’s roosting area and stayed a few minutes, but the yellow one was still wandering about. I’d need them both to be in there to shut the door.
It was nearly dark, and yet they wandered again around the yard.
Then they apparently got desperate: I started hearing clunking sounds.
The yellow hen had gotten back up on the ledge, and this time, she was lunging at the glass door.
The black hen got up there with her and also started throwing herself against the glass door.
I thought maybe I’d have to wait until they settled for the night in a tree, and I’d get them then, and move them into the small coop.
The black one figured it out again, and she walked into the small coop’s roosting area.
The yellow one, meanwhile, was looking for a place to spend the night. She wandered about the vegetable garden (actually last year’s vegetable garden, this year’s wild chaos of weeds). I thought I’d corner her and pick her up. The dog, however, seemed to have the same idea, so a wild chase ensued.
We’ve had a couple of hens who, after all the other chickens had walked out the same regular door they did every day for years, would frantically run back and forth along the fencing, clucking out to them, without seeming to remember to walk through the open doorway on the next “wall” of the coop. Luckily, the yellow hen had the same lack of common sense on corners that those two hens had on doorways. She finally got herself stuck in a corner, where I picked her up and set her in the small coop to join the black hen.
As I write this, it’s nearly nightfall, so this will repeat itself in a few minutes.
We’d better hurry up and finish that big coop, for their sake.
