My chickens have been driving me crazy lately. CrAzY i say! This is a whole new flock of chickens that we got last spring, we gave away all our older ones. These new ones were so good for so long. And then it's like they just all of a sudden completely lost it and are wreaking havoc all over the place. They were so good for so long to stay in the yard like all good chickens do. Then one day they found the front porch. Then it was the back patio. Now they head straight for both places first thing every morning. I am constantly hosing down my driveway and porch and patio but they still are always covered with poop. It's disgusting. I seriously can stand it no longer. Like I am about to put chicken on the Thanksgiving menu I am so frustrated. They have their own yard with a fence but they will not stay in it. I clipped my last chickens wings and I didn't really want to have to do it to this batch, but I think they are leaving me with no choice. Anyway. The poop is just one of the problems I am having with these ladies.
Remember that picture above? That was the day I was home alone and came out of my bedroom to find a chicken in my hall.
Well the other day I looked out front and saw something I had never seen before. A chicken on top of my luggage carrier. On top of my van.
We started off with 12 chickens but we have lost a few. Still, once they started laying eggs, I felt like we were not getting the amount of eggs we should be getting to make feeding and cleaning up the poop worth it. Then one of my girls found this little stash in the wood pile.
OK, I actually felt sorry for whoever laid this whopper that we found. Those two eggs flanking it are large size eggs. The one in the middle is giant jumbo sized. Like I really really felt sorry for the girl that had to push that sucker out!
Just to give you and idea of how big it was, this is how it fit in the egg carton.
That same chicken that was in my house before. I really think she thinks she is a human. Every time someone goes in or out of the house, she is there, waiting for her chance to come in the house. She actually runs for the door. And I know I took a picture of her trying to get in the van one time when we were going somewhere, but I can't find it now. She is always trying to get in the van with us. And she also runs for the garage door. We were leaving to go somewhere and we were only going to be gone a few minutes. So I left the garage door open. As we were pulling out of the driveway, I saw her come around the side of the house. I hit the button to close the garage door so she couldn't go in and she took off. She ran for the door and tried to squeeze under it, but she was just a tad too slow. Also. There was this one time a few months ago, when I was outside filling up the chickens water, when this same chicken (OK, I really don't know if it was this same chicken- we have 3 that look just like this- or if all the red chickens are exceptionally naughty) anyway I was crouched on the ground giving the chickens liquid refreshment when this chicken jumped up on top of my head. That really, really...did not go over well with me. Do you know what it feels like to have a chickens talons digging into your skull? It's not pleasant.
After we removed the stash of eggs from the woodpile, our daily egg production started to increase. I still thought we were not getting the proper amount. That is when Zac and his friend Ethan, who have appointed themselves chicken wardens, found this stash in our old chicken coop, which I thought the chickens had no access to. I thought wrong. Since the wardens boarded this up, our egg production has increased even more.
Anyway. I really don't know what the point of this post is. Other than to tell you that we have some mighty crazy chickens around here and they are starting to make me mighty crazy as well.
