We wanted to show you the hilarious "freeing" of the chickens as I promised you I would in my last post. And here it is. We are finally letting our fast growing chickens out of their coop so they can explore the grass and forage for bugs and critters like they were meant to do. Joel ordered this electrified fence to help keep out predators and supposedly to keep the chickens in....at least for now. Let phase one begin:
Joel and I loosely enclosed an area off the back of the chicken coop with the fence by simply pushing the posts into the ground and then he hooked the fence up to the electric source. Ok, it's now going "hot" as he put it.
It tickled me to see how excited Joel was to run inside the coop and slide their little entry door up and out of the way. Now, let's see what happens......hmmmmm, nothing. Absolutely nothing. For 10 minutes. Seriously. Nothing. Every once in a while a chicken would go up to the door, look out and turn away. Really?
And then the girls and boys started to have a conversation among themselves. This gal kept stretching her neck to see just how far down it really was to reach the ground. I think she was saying something like this, "Who me? Are you crazy?" Five more minutes and still no one wanted to venture outside.
Then, Mr. Macho showed up. "I'm the Big Bad Rooster." But, even he wouldn't step outside.
"Don't do it Edna! NOOOOOO!" By now we were giggling at them. Don't they look like they are egging one another to jump? They were all jockeying for space to look out the door, but not one of them wanted to venture outside.
"Oh, no! What have I done?" As fast as this one jumped outside it quickly flew back up to the safety of the coop.
By now I remembered that the coops I have pictures of on my Pinterest board show a ramp leading from the ground up to the door. Duh! They want a ramp! Joel ran over to the barn and picked up some wood he had lying around and fashioned a makeshift ramp for them.
Ta-da! Joel to the rescue. Maybe this will work.
"Aargh! This is slippery!" We got the giggles as they finally decided to venture out but ended up using the ramp like a sliding board. Several of the chickens actually slid down the board, flapping their wings to maintain balance the whole way down. What a show!
"Looks like she made it. Maybe we can, too. What do you think? Should we chance it?"
"Let me in. Step aside, girls. Let me IN!"
And then five minutes later.......peck, peck, peck. Yum. All of a sudden they decided as a group that it was safe to be outside and they started doing what chickens naturally do. They pecked. And scratched. The end.
Yes, they have a quite a bit or real estate to discover. But they all were still hovering near the coop.
Finally after half an hour all 25 of them were going in and out of their little trap door like they had been doing it all their lives. These birds have quite the personality and Joel just cracks up watching them. They're entertaining, that's for sure.
A few hours later we went down to the coop just before dark so we could put them back inside for the night. All but one of them was already inside and sitting up on the top roost. The one that was still running around outside was saying "cheep, cheep, cheep" and ran up to Joel at the fence. He turned off the fence so he wouldn't get jolted and reached down to see if the chick would let him touch her. She was happy to have someone familiar near apparently because she was nice and calm.
Joel reached out to pick her up and he said it was as if she was relieved he had finally come to her rescue. I guess she couldn't figure out where everyone else had gone. He put her inside the coop and she promptly hopped up onto the roost with the others.
And now, after a full five days since their first foray into the big, wide world it's like old hat. Joel puts them out each morning around 8am and brings them in just as dusk is falling at 8pm. They are all inside the coop by the time he gets there at 8pm and he finds them sitting on the very top roost....all in a row. How funny!
Gettin' the hang of things now,
Debbie
