First Egg

First egg! Mark this date: August 12, 2015 (born March 22).

Turns out when the chickens chase you around squawking at the top of their crowy little throats it means they’re “broody.”

I was hoping that was what it meant, though I suspected it might be that they were really angry that I’ve confined them to their run, even though they’ve had plenty of food (and I’m still throwing in some of the tomatoes they’ve “sampled” when they were out free ranging. When I went out to find them standing on the carrots feasting– feasting I tell you– on tomatoes, that was enough. I knew it would cost me more in poultry feed, because they’ve eaten almost no feed the last two weeks out foraging, but so be it. They could not have a tomato buffet.

So I embarked on a project yesterday to get them a little more “green” space. It was really more daunting than it should have been. I did not grow up or even in adulthood spend any time building things. So I’m inordinately proud of my final achievement. Behold: the new chicken yard.

Whereas we have been leaving the main coop door shut all the time, it now opens onto this yard during the day. I had this big piece of netting, and I made the space as large as possible, extending into the prairie just a tad. I staked it and used zip ties to attach the netting to the stakes. Landscaping fabric staples secure the netting to the ground. It ends between the coop door and the run door, so I can still get in and out to feed and water them.

And the ingenious part was to make one of the side panels loop over the stake with a zip tie instead of attach securely to the top. I can just lift the loop and reduce the netting height by half, an easy step over to get into the yard. (I know you’re impressed.) Ta da!

It took until this morning for the chickens to figure out how to get into the yard. I imagine when Steve went out early this morning and opened the coop door they all poured out! When I went out later, four of them were happily foraging in the grass.

Not Fred, though. He was inside the run looking out. It takes Fred a little longer to catch on with everything. It’s like something traumatic happened to her when she was a chick. (In the early days I pulled a bit of poop from Fred’s butt, causing her to lose all the down on her backside, which I think was very embarrassing for her.)

I’m hopeful that in addition to greens, there will be lots of grasshoppers and other bugs in there. And because I don’t fully trust my handiwork, I check several times a day to see if they’ve made a break for it yet! (I also have to obsessively check for more eggs, too, of course.)