The Chickie Chronicles

I haven't talked about our chickens lately, so thought you might appreciate an update.

Frankly, it's been a little weird in the Brick chicken world.

Our 'Production Red' girlies look like this...3 of them, 16 of the black 

Austrolorps

     The older girls are molting right now. They look ruffled and messy, and a big batch of neck feathers are falling out, giving them a naked look. That's bad enough, but this also means they've largely stopped laying eggs. One, two or three eggs every day, versus what we were getting before: 7, 8 or 9. Our regular customers are getting short shrift, and I feel like a lucky woman if I have enough for scrambled eggs for the Brick in the morning.
    
     The younger girls have a new and interesting hobby -- instead of gathering down in the coop at night, like they used to, they want to roost on top of the fence. The six-foot chain link fence. The one that's supposed to keep them safe, from foxes and hawks and such.
     This means that every night, the Brick goes outside the fence, I go inside...and between us, we scoop them off like a big bouquet and try to stuff them into the coop. They fly everywhere, whirring and clucking, and we chase them back in. This takes quite a while, and no doubt, provides plenty of entertainment for the neighbors.

     Saturday, we clipped their wings. That was a picnic in itself. We chased the babies under the netting by the coop (to keep them protected from hawks, if they'd bother to stay underneath), then plucked them out, one by one. The Brick clipped one wing deeply of each, the feathers falling away in showers.

That would be enough to keep them on the ground, right?

That evening, every single bird but one was on the fence, cooing sleepily. Happy as clams.

Tonight, I bought another roll of netting. We'll spread it up high, against the bushes that peek over the fence there. They won't be able to climb (or jump, or fly) up again. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

 The molting should end soon, and the eggs start up again. The babies will grow out of this 'wild thing' period soon, hopefully. (And start laying eggs themselves in September.) But meanwhile, I wonder: who's smarter, them or us?

I don't want to know the answer.