OK I promise this will be my last post about chickens for a while and tomorrow I will return to posting other profound and amusing observations from my life, such as Turi choosing to wear all his pants backwards like the third member of Kriss Kross arrived several decades too late.
But for now I will abandon all restraint and reveal myself for the truly crazy chicken obsessed lady I have become. I have to admit the whole chicken thing has been harder than I thought. It turns out Betty is a bit of a mole and has spent the last few days mercilessly pecking Chocolate Brownie (I feel like this is begging for a lame joke about everyone wanting to peck at chocolate brownies but I digress). There was even blood splattered, Quentin Tarantino style, about the coop. After endless googling and boring all my friends trying to come up with ideas to solve the issue, I decided it couldn't hurt to try some of my hard learned parenting techniques on the poultry. When Turi and Minty are fighting they usually just need some time running around in the fresh air to calm them down!
So I decided to let the chickens run freely around the garden for a couple of hours. At the moment this is somewhat of a leap of faith. We don't have complete perimeter fencing. Our house backs onto a farm and it is possible for the chickens to range further than the eye can see before they reach any fencing!! Not to mention my unfenced freshly planted veggie garden with new baby seedlings sprouting, situated within meters of their coop!
Today their free range session was a raging success. They discovered an unsightly dirt patch near the house and had a luxurious dust bath. I've never seen birds look so blissed out!! Then they pottered about the yard while I hung the washing out. Minty patrolled the veg patch and Turi played frisbee. Then when we needed to go back inside I just lured them back into their regular enclosure with some snacks. Their favourite foods are live moths and goji berries! After their time in the wild outdoors there was no more pecking issues and everyone played nicely together! Fingers crossed the peace will last!
Posts
That's a great idea giving them a run outside! It reminds me of the guinea pigs we had when we were young: there was always one bossy, larger one that bullied the smaller one and hogged the food. Actually my cats are like that now too: Tiger is the alpha male and I have to be careful to give them small amounts of food at a time and often watch them eat to make sure Hermione actually gets to eat her food.
ReplyDelete