The weather is warming up and the chickens are restless.

Here you see them trying to dig the house off its foundation.

Some days, it’s warm and sunny and they demand to be let into the house so they can eat all the cat food.

“Monkey,” says Patience the Cat calmly, “these visitors look menacing … and delicious.  Perhaps we should take our chances and let them in.”

Other days, the snow keeps everyone in their respective coops.

This is the chicken coop. My coop is the big brick one.

In other good news, the birds are laying more eggs.

Roxanne is the only chicken in the yard who lays white eggs.

We’re all very excited about spring.

So excited that we dance around on the deck!

At least most of us are.  Mr. Pickles is taking it all a bit more calmly.

“Somebody turn off the lights!”, he says.

Marshmallow hasn’t done anything particularly wrathful lately, but it’s such a good title I couldn’t resist.  Besides, I still blame her for starting the whole Garage Chicken fiasco.

Marshmallow, in all her big-chicken glory.

The poultry social scene is improving here on the Homestead.  You’ll have to take my word for it since I did not insult the Red Chickens by taking mug shots of them, but I got so tired of watching them pick on poor Roxanne that I sentenced them all to two days in Chicken Jail.

Everyone, including the mild mannered Middle Chicken, was confined for two full days.

They squawked and stamped and kicked over their water bowl in protest, but I didn’t give in.  Somehow, I let Marshmallow out every morning (to keep Roxanne company) while making the Reds stay in the coop.

They even missed the Daily Snack!

In the meantime, Roxanne had decided she was Queen of the Garage.  I carry her in every night to sleep on her ladder.

Once in the garage, Roxanne calls the shots!

I let her believe that I am Chicken #2 when we’re in there.  I think it helped her build self-confidence and the courage to stand her ground, or at least sidle quietly away, when the Reds head in her direction.

Look how close she got to the Red Chickens!

Roxanne still sleeps in the garage, but she’s started eyeing the coop at night when the others go in.  Her feathers have all grown back in and she’s built up some confidence.  Who knows?  It was a rough start, but maybe she’s building up to something else.

Maybe even the Wrath of Roxanne.

© 2013 Hungry Chicken Homestead

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The Backyard Farming Connection

I’m sure this story will sound silly to real chicken farmers, but I’m just an amateur.

We hardly use Roxanne Chicken’s name anymore.  We call her the ‘Garage Chicken’.

She sleeps on a ladder, a spot she chose herself. I tuck a box top on the rung under her to catch any nighttime messes. The system works for everybody.

Did you catch the other part of the story?  Roxanne and her flockmate, Marshmallow, arrived last month.  They are both two years old, good layers and hand raised.  Up until now, all the residents of the backyard had worked out the pecking order and we didn’t have too much trauma.

I put Roxanne outside during the day, but the others chase her around and peck her growing feathers. This morning, I left the rest of the flock in the coop and she’s having some peaceful outdoor time.

I had separated the newcomers into their own coop, which seemed to be working until Roxanne’s feathers started disappearing.  Marshmallow had been pulling them out at night.  Since the weather had taken a turn into bitter cold and Roxanne was shivering, I put her in the garage.  Was this necessary?  I’m not sure, but I couldn’t leave a shivering chicken outside.

Roxanne hopped up on a deck table this morning and surveyed her surroundings.

I put her back outside when the weather warmed up, where I had also managed to integrate the red and white chickens into the same coop.  Roxanne wasn’t crazy about this arrangement, but she’s been trying.  She gamely gets up on the roost with the rest at night and tucks herself into a corner, behind the heat lamp.

I thought this was working, until one morning I left them in the coop for an hour after sunrise.  When I got out there, her little face was bleeding.  That’s not all bad.  I suspect she challenged someone else to a chicken duel, a good sign.  But since blood attracts more pecking, I brought her in to clean up her beak.  Once inside, she was content to stay inside and made herself hard to catch.  Like most small business owners, I don’t have a lot of time to chase birds around the garage and so she stayed another night.

Roxanne is a nice companion if you’re working in the garage. She eats hen scratch off the floor and clucks to me when I’m in there.

Roxanne’s breed, California White, tends to be flighty.  She’s easily taunted.  Yesterday, I caught the other birds taking turns chasing her around the yard.  She would scream at the top of her little chicken lungs and run, as if for her life.

The hard truth is, I’m not wired to allow this.  I simply can’t stand it.  I don’t like bullies; human, poultry or otherwise and watching this makes me want to send all the others to what the Wandering Chicken and Mini-Farm calls “Freezer Camp”.

It’s my homestead, I’m the Head Chicken and I want peace.  It’s up to me to find a solution.

But don’t worry.  Nobody is going to Freezer Camp.  Sooner or later, Roxanne’s feathers will grow back and I have confidence they’ll all get used to each other.  In the meantime, we’ll have to be patient.

Sometimes in life, the Garage Chicken is In.

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© 2013 Hungry Chicken Homestead

Two new hens joined the Homestead recently, Roxanne, a little California White, and Marshmallow, a huge Delaware.  When friends with too many chickens offered two egg-laying hens, I couldn’t say no.  My hens hadn’t laid an egg in months, thanks to a particularly long molt.  This, I told my flock, is what they get for taking so many months off.  It’s embarrassing to have to buy eggs when the whole backyard is run by chickens.

Here are the two new hens and a fine chicken shadow.

I had locked up the white hens in the fancy new coop for a few days, to give the birds a chance to become accustomed to each other without any pecking.  I thought the red hens would come over and investigate, but they just eyed the new coop and its new residents with suspicion, from a distance.

Blonde Chicken questions the necessity of adding new hens.

When I let the white chickens out of the coop a few days later, nothing really happened.  The two gangs of chickens didn’t mix, but I did notice an interesting dynamic.  If I set out a treat, say bits of vegetable peelings or a meat bone, the red chickens would run towards it with their usual enthusiasm, but when the white chickens approached, they would wander off casually, as if they had changed their minds about the snack.

Specklehead never changes her mind about a snack. She is horrified, absolutely horrified, at the idea of pretending she doesn’t want this beef bone.

Then I had this conversation with the white birds original owners.

“How are the chickens?”, they asked.

“Good,” I said, “but my birds seem a little afraid of the big Delaware.”

“Oh, yeah,” they said enthusiastically.  ”She’s a mean chicken.”

Roxanne fits in when she wants to. It’s Marshmallow that everyone is afraid of.

I kind of feel sorry for Marshmallow, with her poor social skills.  She’s the Odd Chicken Out.  Roxanne doesn’t elicit much of a response from the red chickens, one way or another, and she can blend in with them when she wants too, but they shy away from Marshmallow.  She has power, but no flock.

Most days, I find the red chickens under the deck, their traditional winter meeting place, and the white chickens dust bathing in the garden or scratching around in the straw.  That’s fine with me, as long as the chicken gangs don’t start a rumble.  The yard is still peaceful and, most important to me as the Egg Thief, I don’t have to go to the grocery store.

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Chickens are weird.  Sometimes that’s all I can think to say.

Here they are, plotting some more odd behavior, no doubt…  Look at how Blonde Chicken is eyeing me.

If you read Part I and Part II of this story, you know the chickens just don’t see the lovely new coop as a home.  They see it as an extension of Chicken Jail, albeit one where snacks sometimes hide.

“We like snacks,” they say, “but not enough to stop being suspicious of new things!”

These determined chickens evaded that coop despite snacks, heat, forcible relocation and even bitter cold.

Or at least I thought it was bitter cold.

We finally had a night with below zero temperatures, something that happens here in the high desert in the winter.  It was cold!  My nose froze on the inside whenever I took a breath.  The water bowls froze so hard and fast, they still had little waves.  The steam from the nearby power plant huddled together in the air, as if the water molecules didn’t want to leave the herd.

And even the chickens seemed to want to sleep together.  Worried, I went out several times to check on them and finally decided to bring them some baked apples, just to add a little extra heat.

Do these look scary to you?

Specklehead, determined to prove wrong my hypothesis about the chickens being cold, had moved out onto the roost, by herself.  I peered into the coop and there she was, all fluffed up and sleeping.

“Fine,” I mumbled.  ”I’ll bury these hot apples in the bedding underneath you, just to give you a little extra heat.”

She opened one eye.

I quietly dug a shallow hole, dropped the apples in and buried them again.

She opened her other eye and looked at me suspiciously.

“It’s just for heat,” I protested.

She pointed her head down and looked nervously at the place where the apples were buried.  Then she shuffled over to the other side of the roost.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Chicken!”, I said.

I swear I almost heard her say, “I was sound asleep!  Leave me alone!”.  She jumped off the roost and, turning her back on me, rejoined the rest of the flock behind the partition.

“Don’t bring us fruit! We don’t want suspicious fruit!”

We are different species, me and them.  We just can’t get around it!

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