Best Laid Plans

A couple of weeks ago we changed up the chicken management scheme.

And everything seemed cool for about a week.

The girls settled in fine, and I set up a special little dust bathing area for them.

Then the hawk showed up.

We lost two girls before we realized what was going on and who the culprit was. 🙁

We moved the chicken house out of the pen and set the girls back to free-ranging.

They seemed to get over the shock of the hawk attacks and went back to their old routine of sitting on the front porch and pooping on everything 🙂

Which meant that the free-ranging thing was not going to last.

So this weekend we moved the girls into the pasture.

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The fencing is to keep the sheep away from the chicken house (they know there is chicken food in there).

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They’ve got their nesting boxes in there (with a little bit of makeshift tarp to keep the crazy sideways rain out)

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And they can access the pasture through their special little chicken-sized doorway (between the rebar arches).

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So far, the sheep have been pretty cool about sharing the pasture with our feathered friends.

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But they I’m not sure they know quite what to make of the new decorating scheme.

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4 Comments

  1. Yvonne Madsen

    Hi Denise – Good luck with all that! Our chickens went bye-bye a few months ago. We had a “hawk feeder” here, too. Between that, chicken poop everywhere, and having them dig up my favorite garden plants repeatedly, we decided to send them off to freezer camp. I miss their antics, I miss finding them in the garage getting into cat food, and I miss the eggs. . . but our neighbor has chickens so I’ll be a regular customer there.
    Yvonne 🙂

    Reply
  2. sheepsclothing

    sorry to hear about everyone going to freezer camp. but i can understand – the poop and garden scratching are why we can’t let them have the run of the place here anymore.

    Reply

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