Ok, here's what we do.... We have a chicken mobile that holds all 44 hens and right now, 2 roosters with room to spare. We hook it up to the pickup and take it to a new spot in a new pasture every week in the summer. We move them in the morning before we let them out of the chick mobile. It seems if we move them within site of our house or where they were the last week, they come back to the old spot that first night. Or hang around the house. We can't let them stay out all night or the coyotes or coons or whatever would get them.
So tonight we had dinner out with the folks before they headed back home two states away. We come in and go lock up the hens and then realize that one is in the lilac bushes at the house. I think, uh oh, I so messed up. We moved the chick mobile this morning. Sure enough, with one hen under my arm, my chicken crook in the other, my husband carrying the flashlight, off we walk, out into the pasture where the chick mobile was this last week. Yup, more hens in the weeds along the fence. I asked hubby if the fence was hot. Nope. Oh thank goodness! So he holds the extra hen and I start scrambling back and forth sweet talking my 'chicka, chicka, chickas' and snacking my wire crook at their legs. So got one. That makes two under hubby's arms and he's holding the flashlight. Off I go, talking sweet, climbing back and forth until I catch another. Ok, so now we have three. I take off gloves and my fluffy hoody and stuff a hen up the sleeve and leave it wrapped by hubby's feet. Off I go and after a bit catch another one, stuff it in the other arm hole of my hoody. One more? Nope, two. Ok, get that one and hubby holds it by its feet while I catch the last one. Hubby is saying, hurry, the battery is going down! So here we are, out in the pasture and now we have all of them, I carry 3 and hubby carries 3 and off we go. I am not going to make it all the way back out to the other pasture and the chick mobile with my loa d after that work out. So we stop at the house for the ... jeep and we throw them all, ok, set them all nicely in the back and off we go. Poor chicks, will they remember any of this and learn their lessons? Nope. But I sure hope I learn my lesson. Either keep the poultry net up the first day of the move or make sure we are home before dark so we can herd the wanderers back home. Well they don't herd all that well. They do follow the soaked oats and scratch fairly well if I don't ask them to go two pastures away. Ok, so the poultry fence it is. Too bad they can fly over it.
Well that is the end of the evening. Fun, fun, out here on the homestead! I sure did work off that ice cream I had for dessert! LOL
Denise M
