Chicken Update with Pictures
I love how friendly this latest batch of chickens has become. All I have to do is sit down in their yard and they'll come over to beg for treats, peck at my clothing hoping it's food, and generally hanging out nearby. Okay, so maybe their true motivation is their stomachs, but they do all this near us, so we can anthropomorphize accordingly.
Several weeks ago they all became outdoor only. Hey Hey was the last holdout. It took H putting her on the roost one night after a kerfuffle in the house for it to click in her head. Every night since, all six babies have roosted properly.
We now always leave the door between the duck house and the exercise yard open. The ducks usually muck up one of the chickens' water buckets with this setup, so at night I leave an extra bucket inside the chicken house where the ducks can't reach. Every morning it has become the routine to let the chickens out through the exercise yard door and give them full access to the chicken/duck/goose yard for some running around and nomming on weeds time. They cluster at the door as soon as they see me coming. It took the ducks longer than you might think to figure out they could let themselves out that way too.
The rest of the time we keep the chickens locked in the duck house/exercise area to protect them from hawks and owls, though sometimes C lets them out and hangs out with them for a while. The chickens are surprisingly easy to herd when it's time to shoo them back in.
Several weeks ago they all became outdoor only. Hey Hey was the last holdout. It took H putting her on the roost one night after a kerfuffle in the house for it to click in her head. Every night since, all six babies have roosted properly.
We now always leave the door between the duck house and the exercise yard open. The ducks usually muck up one of the chickens' water buckets with this setup, so at night I leave an extra bucket inside the chicken house where the ducks can't reach. Every morning it has become the routine to let the chickens out through the exercise yard door and give them full access to the chicken/duck/goose yard for some running around and nomming on weeds time. They cluster at the door as soon as they see me coming. It took the ducks longer than you might think to figure out they could let themselves out that way too.
The rest of the time we keep the chickens locked in the duck house/exercise area to protect them from hawks and owls, though sometimes C lets them out and hangs out with them for a while. The chickens are surprisingly easy to herd when it's time to shoo them back in.