Help! 4 lovely ladies just moved in, coop and all

Just remember that "Chicken Math" will strike and you'll be a full fledged member of the "Addicted to Chickens" Group and there's no 12 Step Recovery.

We had a bizarre 50 degree day yesterday, and a ton of snow melted, exposing...grass. I think the chickens were more excited to get to the grass than my horse was!

We've been able to build them a little makeshift "patio" so they can get much more time outside in relative safety, and they love it (it has dirt to roll in!). There have been a couple of "jailbreaks" but they don't really go anywhere, just stand on the other side of the fence looking at the ones who are still on the inside, like "what are you doing submitting to those artificial boundaries?!? Join us out here in freedom!" There is one ringleader- I watched her go back and forth a couple of times through the little hole she had found, trying to get the others to follow her, which was hysterical. You could just see her little chicken eyes cursing the others for being such dummies. Yesterday, she was successful in getting one to follow her out. So, this weekend, we'll be patching and strengthening the fence. I don't mind them being out, but I just don't trust my neighbor to keep her dog contained.

LOL! I love it when a HEN gets to learn about "herding chickens" the hard way! I can see her little stink eye looking back at the others right now.

These girls just continue to crack me up. I let them out of their pen in the afternoon when I take my dogs for a walk, and at promptly 5:15, I go out to close them up for the night, to find them already tucked in to bed. I have never had animals that are so punctual about heading home for the night- it's a great feature! I assume "bed time" will get later as the days get longer, right?

Yes - chickens (much like me) are very daylight oriented. You need to throw a rooster into your flock and get a walking alarm clock.

I dunno - our roosters crowed all day and all night, which is why they're no longer our roosters.

But I love reading this thread, and reading about someone else's enjoyment of their chickens. Makes me feel a little less like the crazy animal lady that someone else takes the same delight I them that I do.

Interesting - I wonder if it was a territorial thing between multiple roosters. I've noticed that when I had more than one rooster (I've got one now) that would happen but not in the dark of the night.

My roosters crow if anything wakes them up at night. If I paid any attention to them, they would be good watch dogs. I suspect that if you have any neighbors close by, they will hate you for roosters. It would, however, serve the evil dog neighbor right.

WE started out with two roosters, gave one away, and the remaining one crowed all the time as well. And you can hear a rooster a long way away.

So I don't think it was territorial. We held one to one rooster for a while because my daughter really wanted to raise chicks from eggs. So we put the rooster in a divided section of the run with the hens we wanted to breed, but it didn't really work. Other hens went over the fence to get to the roo, hens that we were sure were broody didn't sit on the eggs consistently, and I honestly don't know it we had fertilized eggs or not. After six weeks, we threw out the eggs that we were hoping a hen would incubate, and let everyone back into the general population.

So I'm content with buying chicks or fertilized eggs from now on.

Shortly after that we found another home for the second roo. I'm sure the neighbors were happy!

Funny you are all talking about roosters, I had a moment yesterday where I was seriously wondering if one of my hens was actually a he. I think the Rhode Island reds have just started laying again this week, and I came home from a ride to hear a holy racket in the coop. One of the Reds was in a nesting box chattering up a storm, and the other was trying to push her out, while making a really strange call I haven't heard before. It was sort of a bock....bock....bababoooookkk kind of noise, and to me sounded like what I imagine a crowing rooster sounds like. Now, I have no experience with roosters, so I'm not sure what to think, and yesterday was the only time I'd heard it.

Today when I went to let them out of the coop, there was again one Red in the nesting box, but sitting on two eggs. So, I don't know who else laid this morning. But, there was no more strange talking this morning.

As far as the evil dog-blegh, husband chased it away from sniffing around the pen the other day. Everyone was unharmed, but I'm so sick of worrying about it!