Cluck, Cluck, Boom!

Remember last week when I mentioned that we were building a new Hen House so we could get chickens again?

Well we mostly finished it, to the extent that it is now home to 4 beautiful chickens, who are about a month shy of egg-laying age. Here are a few shots of the process of getting it from the partial frame shown last week, to the Hen-Ready home we have now.

Cindy has a pre-schooler in the daycare named Grace. Grace got out of school a week earlier than the big kids, so she was home to help paint last week!



With the door/lid in place, the Hen House was painted to match the trim on our house.



A few sheets of plexiglass to fill in the windows, and it was ready for occupancy!


(we have four hens - the 4th one's tail feathers are barely visible on the left of this picture)

And finally, a close up of one of these pretty girls...



Good stuff, huh?

But wait. If this post is called "Cluck, Cluck, Boom!" then where's the boom?

Oh, I am SO glad you asked!

When we got our first batch of chickens, we raised them from week-old chicks, so they always knew that their house was their safe and happy place to be. As they got older, they always knew that when it got dark, it was time to go up into their house and roost, safely protected from the nasty raccoons that frequent this area. As long as we went in after them and locked their house, they were perfectly safe.

These adolescent chicks we have now, had some sort of hen house at their last address, but it didn't particularly look like the one they have here. Either that, or they never got to go outside, and this newfound taste of freedom is more than they're willing to give up, even at bedtime.

We got the girls on Saturday. That night, I kept thinking, "I need to be sure to round them up at dusk and put them in their house so they know that's what it's there for."

Typically, I missed the "dusk" moment when the girls decided to get ready for bed. By the time we looked out, three of them had perched up on the fence for the night, in prime-for-plucking-by-a-nasty-raccoon fashion. There was no sign of the fourth hen...

Kaylee and I collected the three sleepy girls from their roosts and put them in their house for the night. We were unable to find that hideaway, though, so I was relieved on Sunday morning to see her walking around outside of the chicken yard.

Then Sunday night, we went to round them up again, and again, three of them weren't too hard to catch. That fourth one though, has officially earned the name "Psycho Chicken." I did manage to catch her, and tossed her through the door to the house. As soon as I shut the door (which required a bit of a slam) however, she went absolutely nuts.

First, she ran full-speed into the door, trying to break it down.
(no luck, it was latched)

Then she flew full-speed into the small side window above the door.
(fail - it's only a 6" x 8" window, AND it has plexiglass in it)

Still not convinced she was actually trapped, she did the same power-launch into both of the big front windows. Feathers were flying everywhere, the noises were barely-of-this-world, and when the final window didn't let her out, she literally started doing backflips... Two or three of them, where she'd run against the back wall of the house, jump up, flip off the wall, somersault back to her feet and do it again.

After the final backflip, she dropped to the floor completely motionless, perfectly on her back, with her completely motionless feet perfectly straight up in the air. Man, I wish I'd had the camera for that!!

Kaylee was mildly freaking out, saying that we needed to open the lid and get her out. Cindy and I were pretty sure she'd just rung her bell really good, and would recover - and if not, and she had killed herself, there wasn't anything we'd be able to do, so we left her there.

After about a minute, her feet slowly rolled over one way, while her head slowly rose in the other direction. At that point, I thought maybe she HAD broken something vital to survival, but then she slowly stood up and walked, VERY un-balanced, around the coop.

As she walked, both wings were partially extended, then the left wing came in and the right one stayed open. Her mouth was hanging open too, as if she was unable to close it. We went to bed, knowing that by morning she'd either be back to normal, or ready for dinner.

Morning came, and she was fine. We kept them cooped up the entire day, to help them realize that it's not a bad place to be - after all, their food and water are there! They should love it!

Then yesterday I let them out, so they could show me that they learned to go back in to their house for bedtime.

None of them did.

Again, 3 hens were pretty easy to convince.

Again, the 4th one was nowhere to be found.

This time though, we found her, and I thoroughly enjoyed putting her through the door and shutting it behind her.

BOOM!

This time there were only a few attempts to fly out through the closed windows, just enough to make her beak hang open again... And again today, we've left them locked up. I'm going to go let them out now, give them a few hours before bedtime... At some point they have to learn how to go to bed like nice, civilized chickens!!

Until then, it's Cluck, Cluck, Cluck, BOOOOM!