Since the Chickens just arrived last night, this seemed the perfect opportunity to begin telling their story with us. We had an eventful day.
We woke up at five thirty in the morning. Probably not too early for a chicken, definitely not early for me. Ann and I went out to look in on them at about seven in the morning, but couldn't let them out of the coop because there wasn't anything like a pen put up to keep them contained and out of the vegetable gardens. Our hounds were very excited at all of this new activity. We had brought them in from the dog run (adjacent to the Chicken run and separated by a slat wooden fence) because they just made entirely too much noise for that early on a Sunday morning. The chickens didn't seem to mind their relentless barking, whining, and baying, but the neighbors might have been, so they were left out in the front yard until later in the day. I brought each dog into the dog run after we let the girls out into their new enclosure, insisting that the dogs keep calm. Eventually I gave up and only let Henri Hudson stay for the show since he was being quiet. We figured they were all doing well enough for us to leave them for a while. The coop is plenty big enough, they weren't going to be cramped and we had a plan to go out to the Farm to pick up some of our metal fence posts at the same time as we stacked all of the wood I took off of the tiny home trailer last week.
After we got back to the house we found our first egg. This was a very exciting thing for both of us. An immediate success. Our first egg!
But this excitement could not last. We had to put up a wire fence up to separate the chickens from our vegetables and let the girls out. At that point we decided that our Rhode Island Red would be named Rhoda, The silver Wyandotte would be named Blondy, and the two gold Wyandottes would be name Sara and Dippity (after a set of calendar pinups I made about ten years ago). Blondy and the twins are sort of stand-off-ish, they don't like being picked up or petted, but Rhoda loves people and doesn't mind. So Ann carried her around a bit,while talking to the others. We spent some time with them, making sure they would find their way around. Rhoda strutted around, and looking through cracks in the back fence. The other three went to work right away scratching the ground and eating anything that looked worthy. We left the girls to their own business and got busy around the house for a while.
After lunch Ann went out to check on them and we discovered two of them were missing. Sara had jumped the fence into the dog run, Rhoda was just missing. We chased Sara back into the Chicken Run and went for a walk to find our missing Rhoda. It would be hard to describe where we found her except to say that she had jumped the back fence and found a nice hiding place in the neighbor's flower garden. Luckily for us she doesn't mind being handled and came home easily enough. After attaching another two feet of wire fence over the top of the back fence and the fence separating the Dog Run from the Chicken Run, the girls stopped trying to escape.
Meg, of Meg's Eggs, the woman who sold us the girls, had been feeding her flock on compost-able garbage out of the house, so Ann decided to give it a try. The spoiled strawberries, faded grapes, and watermelon rinds were a big hit. The girls ate everything they were given and this made Ann very happy. Eventually the girls helped get rid of some potato skins, and a few more grapes. Meg tells us that they will eat practically anything, including meat, so I figure they will be fed quite a bit of the same stuff we normally put down the garbage disposal.
Toward eight in the evening we herded the girls back into the coop, thinking that they might not have the habit of going in on their own yet. They went quietly enough and we retired them for the evening. The girls had a good first day at their new home.
No comments:
Post a Comment