And in chicken news...

I could hear the chicken, but I couldn’t see the chicken. Just little clucks, wafting off into the growing darkness.

I had spent the last couple days, on and off making a new lightweight chicken coop. The idea of the new coop was it was light enough to lift onto a cart and then and I could move the chickens to various spots in the yard. I also had some portable fencing. 

I have another coop the chickens had been living in, but it’s way too big to move and then there’s a third coop my father-in-law built, bless his heart. He was a shop teacher and the thing is way over engineered and weighs about 250 pounds. The boy and I can move it, but just barely. 

The new svelte coop I built was made out of sheathing from the big orange lumber store and it was absolute garbage wood, even brand new. Fortunately I had some better plywood under my stack and used that for most of it. The whole thing cost about 100 bucks, or in today’s economy, 10 dozen free range eggs. 

Once I had the coop built I transferred the chickens into the new coop, which was no small task. Chickens sure can be slippery.

I tasked the boy with shutting the door behind me when I went into the coop to catch the chickens. 

I caught all but one without any problems, but the last one squirted out through the big gap in the door. 

“I told you to close the door behind me,” I said to the boy. 

He looked off into the distance, like there was something far more interesting in the woods behind the house. 

I chased the chicken down eventually and put it in the little fenced in area I built out near the apple and the oak tree. And then we went for a hike in Glacier National Park to calm my nerves. 

When we came home things went about as well as I could have expected, which is to say, the chickens didn’t think much of the new coop, but they did discover that if the jumped up on top of it they could then hop over the new fence. 

They say chickens can’t fly, but I had one way up in a tree above my head, clucking softly into the night. 

I managed to load the rest into the fancy new coop and with help from the boy (he was surprisingly helpful this go round) and we put them behind another fenced off area where two crabby old hens lived. 

The chicken in the tree decided to jump a few limbs down to take a better look at what was going on (one of the crabby old hens was having a fit) and I was able to reach up and grab it by its feet. It let out a big squawk and I put it in the new coop and then locked it. I then locked up the  bigger coop that held just the crabby old hens because they won’t let the younger chickens in. 

The next morning the sun came out and I’d like to say the chickens are one big happy family now, but that is not the case. Pecking order is all too real and the young ones scurry about avoiding the crabby hens.

But upon further review, it looks like most of the chicks we raised from eggs, are (drum roll) ... roosters!

 So if anyone wants a black rooster, totally free, email me at editor@hungryhorsenews.com. I might do a package deal with one of the crabby hens.

I can only take so much fowl drama in my life.