It's 4 AM and I am awake enjoying the full moon and worrying about little Pete, who is spending his first night outside. The coyotes are barking somewhere. Have they noticed that he is not in his coop? I get up and wander outside in the moonlight to check on him. All is well and he is asleep on the new roost I installed this evening for the back pen. Little Pete has been sent to isolation and is not with his coop mates anymore. He has begun to feel the effects of the testosterone overload common in roosters and was pecking at the heads of his little flock mates. He was also finding the old hens too attractive suddenly and they were not happy at all to be jumped on once more. So Little Pete has new digs as of this morning. Matt helped get him confined to the back coop. He has food and water and will be leaving us as soon as we can arrange his departure. We must send at least five hens with him to get the flock down to a manageable size for the big coop in winter. We have lost none to predators this summer. This evening I was ready to send them all.
It began with an attempt to give Little Pete some shelter in his new digs, in case there was rain. It was time for the girls to come in, so they were gathering up for their evening treat and we were headed to the coop, but we were dragging this plastic bin with us to prop up for Pete Jr. The girls freaked out at the sound of it dragging across the ground and began running in all directions hysterically. It got worse when we didn't stop moving the thing right away. Some went into the coop and jumped at the walls. Most fled into the woods in all directions. The ones in the coop were yelling and frantic. It was an amazing display of total melt down in the chicken brain. Even after the bin stopped making noise and we began to try to calm them down, they were still totally bonkers. Most had forgotten how to get to their own coop and would not come in. It was getting dark. The young ones managed to finally calm down enough to go in. The old ones were another story. With this little stress fracture in my foot I'm not in great shape to be chasing chickens, so I stood at the door to let them in as Jeanne tried to round them up. Even when some came back they circled the coop and would not slip in the pen door as usual. It was like they were seeing it all for the first time. We finally herded all we could see in and were still missing two and it was getting dark. So I called Frank and he and little Keith came running to help. They circled out into the woods and located them, but they kept running past the coop and on into more trees. It took some time and careful strategy, along with more scratch, to finally get them corraled into their pen. Keith and Frank went home with a job well done. By this time it was dark enough that they went inside and all got on their roosts. But they still couldn't settle down and alot of squacking could be heard all the way to the house, so I went back. Jeanne had talked to them once and it had helped, but they still needed some reassurance. A little petting and a few words of gentle good night did the trick and they settled in for the night. Little Pete seems to be content without shelter for now. His pen is pretty secure and the moon is shining brightly on the sleeping coops.
Peggy, from the psych ward on Homestead Rd.
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