For several years we had chickens. We enjoyed watching their behavior, their eggs, and their chicks. We would have kept on having chickens, but a weasel killed them all, and so we gave up on having a flock. Here is a chicken story that happened this time of year in 2012:
During our long winter, our three chickens spent the entire time inside their dark chicken house, never going outside When the spring came and they finally ventured outside, they always went back into the chicken house to roost at night. Then for some reason something changed sometime during the summer.
The chickens would spend the long days of summer scratching around in our yard, slowly circling the house. When night came, instead of going into the chicken house to roost like they had always done, they went instead into the barn. That is where I would find them every morning when I went into the barn to get sunflower seeds for the birds.
As autumn approached, I started throwing corn in the chicken house run, to try to encourage them back into the habit of staying in the chicken house, but It didn’t really work. They continued to roost in the barn.
Finally, I accepted that the chickens preferred to stay in the barn, so I loaded up the metal trash can of corn, and another trash can of oats onto my garden cart and wheeled them up to the barn, so that I wouldn’t have to walk down to the chicken house every day to get a container full of their food and bring it up to the barn. I even sprinkled some corn on the barn floor, so they would know that I had relented, and had given in to their wishes.
A couple of days passed, and the next time I went into the barn, I noticed that the corn that I had spread on the floor, was still there. “What’s going on”, I asked myself, “Aren’t they eating?”
That evening I went up to check to see if they were roosting in the barn. They weren’t.
I walked back down to the chicken house, and saw them lined up on the pole, roosting (photo). They had decided to spend the night in the chicken house. I thought I would just wait a few days to see if they would change their mind and go back to the barn. They didn’t.
So with 6 inches of snow on the ground, I once again, loaded up the trash can of corn and the trash can of oats onto the garden cart, and wheeled it back to the chicken house. I returned the garbage cans back where they had stood a week earlier, in the chicken house.
I am happy to report, that a week later, the chickens seem happy to have settled back in their home in the chicken house.
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment