Chicken Update wine and chores dont always mix.

Friends stopped by yesterday and we started talking about the chickens and I was explaining how once I introduced the new chicks to the big hen she would probably torment them a little bit to establish the pecking order etc but since she was outnumber six to one I thought not any one chicken would suffer too much. One friend said oh is that where that phrase comes from and i said yep just like hen pecked and he started to laugh and commented that he knew all about that. Ha marriage is funny.  Interesting where phrases come from though just think "fed up" "under my thumb" and "wrapped around your little finger" all come from falconry.  Fed up is when a bird as fed and is mellow under my thumb is when you secure the jesses around your thumb and wrapped around your little finger is when you take the jesses and well you get it....cool stuff right? Well maybe not maybe you fell back asleep.

Anyway the chickens spent the day in an old dog cage next to the hens run. And later in the day the hen seemed to forget about them so when we got home right around nightfall from watching the triple crown with my parents and going out to dinner I decided hey the big hen is probably almost asleep this could be the perfect time to put the juvies in the coop. Okay now you should not attempt farm chores of this kind after a couple of glasses of wine.

First with Tommys help with tried to put the dog crate on top of the run but then we were smooshing their feet so take two i just opened the door and grabbed (gently) each bird and tossed her (again gently) into the coop. I told Tommy to go inside as I figured I had it all in hand (another hawking reference maybe hmmmm) it wasn't until then that I noticed that one chicken had gotten through the cracks when we picked up the dog crate off the run and was now sitting on top of the run slightly confused. And of course as I tried to grab her and get her into the coop i dropped her and she ran into the very very dense weeds near the garage. By this time the sun had set and as I tried to look for her I knew I was never going to catch her in the dark and she wasn't obliging me my peeping so i could freaking locate her. So I settled everyone else in for the night figuring Ella would be fine luckily we do not have alot of nighttime predators here the biggest predator they face is Lulu the pitbull mix.

So at six a.m. this morning (I am not an early riser on the weekend) I woke up with a start remembering the chicken and at the same time for some reason trying to remember the judd lady who is an actress...just came to me ashley.  So i ran outside in my nightgown with no shoes on forgetting how chilly it was going to get last night and low and behold the 5 chickens where in the run and Emma the escapee was next to them just separated by the fencing. So deep breath still have six new chickens I didn't kill anything yet.

Now the next task is trying to capture the little devil...At this point my feet where blue so i dashed back in for shoes and finally after looking like an idiot running in circles around the coop trying to catch a chicken she got distracted by the evil attentions of Mrs. Fluffybottom and I managed to grab her. So now all six juvenile birds are in the run cowering from the older hen. But like i had hope she is outnumbered and doesn't manage to actually peck any of them they just run and as time goes by today she seems to be losing interest.

Update: just went outside and checked on everyone good news the hen is chilling out taking a dust bath and the juvies are eating and drinking and seem happy OMG did something i tried actually work?

Enough adventure for the day time to start painting this house....Cheers.