Educating the neighbors

Neighbor child, about eight, is fascinated by our chickens; she often hangs around our front gate, waiting for us – or particularly John – to come out so she can beg to come in and see the chickens.
Last week John did let her help him collect eggs. She was intrigued and horrified.
She: What do you do with the eggs?
John: We eat them.
She: You eat eggs that come out of a chicken’s butt?!
John: Where do your eggs come from?
This floored her.

She came back a few days later, demanding that John give her an egg. He did. And another egg. He did. And another egg. He refused. She accepted this, but could not reliably count how many eggs she had

We may have taught her where eggs come from, but it appears we must keep working on her counting skills.

Chicken stampede!

Fall is here. I harvested the potatoes, and we turned the chickens loose in the fenced garden. Much excitement. Not only are all 10 together again - with no apparent need to peck one an other to death - but the vast array of greens and bugs and worms kept things (literally) hopping for several days.
The old 6x6' cage is now covered with tarps for shelter; the old house is used mostly for roosting at night and for nesting underneath.
John has discovered a new game for his play dates with Drake: "someone" leaves the gate open, and ALL the chickens escape. (This actually takes a fair amount of effort on John's part: several of them are reluctant to leave the garden...) Then an emergency call summons Drake to help herd them back into their garden. A good time is had by all.
Unintended consequence: the ladies have discovered what fun it is out in the big yard: fresh grass. With only a 4' fence around the garden, escapes have become a daily - sometimes hourly - occurrence.

- Addendum to last post -
While spreading old chicken bedding in the new garden boxes for next year (now that the chickens have the garden) I found another egg. I buried it.

Egg counts

The white chickens – the ones who actually have a chicken coop, with laying baskets – have been short-changing us lately, laying only one every other day or so.
Yesterday I’m changing the straw in the coop, including turning the cardboard liners in the baskets. Whaddaya know, there’s a charming nest on the ground underneath the lower basket, with several eggs in it.
I (carefully) rake the trash pile out from underneath the coop. 13 eggs! I remember from my sailing days that you can test the freshness of eggs by floating them in water. Thank you, Google for the refresher lesson. All of them appear to be edible, although we’re cracking them carefully.

So the whites’ egg count is back to normal. But what the ? I thought chickens preferred up, not down?

Today I finished digging the potatoes, and turned the whites loose in the garden. The browns are quite sure they are missing out. And they’re right!

Accepted into the flock

The question was, "I go in there?" Like, I really want to, but I'm afraid you'll say "No."
One of his favorite games is "Chicken in the butt." He (or John) picks a bunch of grass and then he throws it at a chicken.
When you hit a chicken in the butt with a bunch of grass, she squawks and flutters around most impressively. And then you get to yell," Chicken in the butt!"

Laying

6 eggs yesterday! All 5 White Orpingtons are laying. One of the others, but I've no idea which. John's opinion is we could make a mint selling them as giant quail eggs.
On Friday I mucked out one pen, let those girls roam the yard. The Black Australorp walked over to the tractor and nosed at the the Whites through the fence, so I thought, put her in with them, see what happens.
The 4 Whites immediately started a dominance routine, chasing the poor black from corner to corner, pecking at here mercilessly.
So now we've put all 5 White Orpingtons back in one pen, and the other 5 are happily passive together.
When the garden is done this fall, I think I'll move the chickens into that fenced area (about 20' x 25'), along with the compost pile. The chickens will get more room to roam, and I'll have less garden to weed.

We have eggs!

Six in three days. Small, but very tasty!

New digs

This morning there was a great squawking out back, and when we went to investigate we found 4 of the 10 hens outside the fence. That settled the question of when we would move some of them (and which ones) into the 4x4 ft pen we got from our neighbor last weekend. (He recently built his chickens the Taj Mahal of coops, and they run free in his yard, there being no toddlers there to compete for poop-free territory.)

So, 2 of the While Orpingtons and 2 of the Buffs are now in residence in the new pen, with a dog-house turned pigeon coop repurposed once again for their nesting box. This was a bit of a challenge, as once out, these chickens want desperately to get back in, but the way out is too close quarters for humans to help, and they can’t figure out how to do it on their own. So we scoot them out of that corner with the leaf rake, then kind of sweep them towards a corner of the yard , hoping they will stick their necks through a hole in the chain link fence. This slows them down enough that we can grab them. (Our neighbors birds are more domesticated: he can just reach down and pick them up.)

As I returned from the feed store with new feeders and a composter, I startled the other 6 in the tractor sufficiently that the Dark Cornish (the one with no tail feathers, you recall) popped over the low spot in the fence. Turns out she is the only one who, having inadvertently escaped, is actually able to return from whence she came. Interesting, the different aspects of survival. If you can’t fend for yourself, like the bullying, first-to-the-treat Whites, at least you can retreat to, not safety exactly, but familiarity.

…later, same day
After a little consideration (it didn’t take much) we have segregated the chickens based on color. (Does separate but equal work with chickens?) Mostly we want to see a) how the Dark Cornish does without the White Orpingtons to gang up on her, and b) what the dynamic will be among the Whites with no one to pick on.
So far, the Whites are huddled together in the old pen, wondering where all the fun went; the rest of them are seeming to notice things on the ground for the first time, hopping up on the roosts, pulling bits of green stuff through the wire. Getting downright playful. Even Ringo, our English Spaniel who was once chased out of the living room by an earthworm, thinks these girls might not get him.