But, as begins so many stories my parents, and now Ches, have heard, "I can explain."
 |
| Building the coop with my dad |
When our 21 chickens turned two weeks old we moved them from their giant tupperware container/brooder in our living room to the shed in our backyard. My parents were visiting and since farming has skipped a generation in my family, I figured the fewer chickens in our general living quarters, the better the impression. So, we partitioned a corner of the shed, layed down pine shavings, added a heat lamp and some roosting logs, establishing a fine temporary living space for the chickens. That weekend my parents helped me build the bottom half of the coop, 4' by 8' space sealed in with chicken wire, but we wanted to get some supplies from our local Habitat for Humanity Re-Home store to inexpensively finish off the enclosed 2nd level where we would keep the brooder boxes.
Thus began my morning tradition of transporting chickens. Whenever the weather was nice, I would load the chickens back into a tuperware container and carry them from the shed to their open-air coop to get some fresh air and sun. This was typically accomplished with minimal fanfare...until last Wednesday when one of the chickens ran out of the shed into the grass. I wasn't too concerned as this had happened before and the site of the wide open world usually left the chickens sitting meekly a foot or two from the shed until I came to collect them. But this day, this chicken, perhaps emboldened by having spent several sunny days outdoors in the safety of her coop, went rogue, and b-lined it for the row of bamboo shoots (mixed with blackberry thorns) that stood 20 feet from the shed. I thought she might quickly regret leaving behind her other chicken mates, so I waited for her to return on her own. She stood 3 feet into the woods, unrepentant. I put food and water at the trees lining, hoping to draw her out, and even placed one of the more docile chickens nearby to see if she would join it. She didn't, and the other chicken began to cry at the indignity of being used as bate for its prodigal cousin.
So, I finished transporting the other chickens and then made my way into the bamboo patch, which just drove the chicken further in. It was approaching my time to leave for work and I was beginning to face the possibility of having to leave the chicken behind. As a last ditch effort, I grabbed a snow shovel from the shed and began beating it against the trees, hoping to convince the chicken that the woods was not the safe space it thought it was. Sure enough, the chicken panicked and ran not just out of the woods, but all the way back into its coop.
Long story short....guess who's finishing the chicken coop this week?
