March 1, 2011
I've said it before and I'll say it again... If April 1st is April Fool's Day... can March 1st be mandated as Yell At A Fool Day?
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| Good Hen |
What crazy weather we've been having! I have even felt a bit like Dorothy the last couple of weeks...but instead of flying monkeys I have flying chickens. It is not often I get angry with my chickens but I can honestly say I got angry yesterday. In all fairness though, it is not all the chickens I'm angry at... just the Red Devils. They really do go out of their way to think up ideas to torture me. This week it is the square hay baler. Yep... they are now conspiring with farm machinery to see how much I can take.
You wouldn't think they could be very smart to look at them. They really do have small heads so they must have a small brain. Which leaves me to wonder how much of their brain do they actually reserve for their diabolical thoughts?
I want to start off by saying we (me, Paul & Uncle Wayne) built them a lovely coop inside the barn so they could be safe, warm and dry. It is quite nice and for the first month everything seemed to be working out just perfect! I believe they have tried their hardest to express how much they really do love their new home. But... the Red Devils must have gotten bored and decided to stir things up a bit.
We have kept the square hay baler in the barn over the winter. One night one of the Red Devils didn't make it into the barn. I just could not find her. It was my fault for going outside to "put them to bed" after dark. After doing a bit of searching with the flashlight I glimpsed a movement from inside the baler. Sure enough the hen was tucked inside the baler in a nice pile of hay. I picked her up and put her in the coop with the others. I really thought that would be the end of it.
It wasn't.
She clearly decided she liked the spot and would commit it to memory. At some point over the past few weeks she decided to lay her eggs there as well. She neglected to tell me this and to make matters worse she decided to share the spot with some of her BFF's.
What tipped me off is that over the past few weeks when all the snow melted they all decided it was safe to go back to free ranging all day long. Normally when they do this they produce more eggs. Like me they suffer from SAD in the winter months. We are kindred spirits me and the girls. When they are suffering from SAD they just don't lay very many eggs. So when I went out to collect eggs yesterday at the end of the day... I expected to have at least 5-6 eggs waiting for me. There was two. Two, teeney weeney banty teaspoon size eggs.
You wouldn't think they could be very smart to look at them. They really do have small heads so they must have a small brain. Which leaves me to wonder how much of their brain do they actually reserve for their diabolical thoughts?
I want to start off by saying we (me, Paul & Uncle Wayne) built them a lovely coop inside the barn so they could be safe, warm and dry. It is quite nice and for the first month everything seemed to be working out just perfect! I believe they have tried their hardest to express how much they really do love their new home. But... the Red Devils must have gotten bored and decided to stir things up a bit.
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| Bad Red Devil |
We have kept the square hay baler in the barn over the winter. One night one of the Red Devils didn't make it into the barn. I just could not find her. It was my fault for going outside to "put them to bed" after dark. After doing a bit of searching with the flashlight I glimpsed a movement from inside the baler. Sure enough the hen was tucked inside the baler in a nice pile of hay. I picked her up and put her in the coop with the others. I really thought that would be the end of it.
It wasn't.
She clearly decided she liked the spot and would commit it to memory. At some point over the past few weeks she decided to lay her eggs there as well. She neglected to tell me this and to make matters worse she decided to share the spot with some of her BFF's.
What tipped me off is that over the past few weeks when all the snow melted they all decided it was safe to go back to free ranging all day long. Normally when they do this they produce more eggs. Like me they suffer from SAD in the winter months. We are kindred spirits me and the girls. When they are suffering from SAD they just don't lay very many eggs. So when I went out to collect eggs yesterday at the end of the day... I expected to have at least 5-6 eggs waiting for me. There was two. Two, teeney weeney banty teaspoon size eggs.
Where on earth were my full size eggs? And so the great egg hunt began. After about 20 minutes I discovered over a dozen eggs tucked away inside the baler. Hmmmm... well how in the heck am I supposed to get myself inside there to get them out??? I stretched myself across the baler and over the row of "nails" to get my arm inside to get them. When I told my friend Jonathan about it he said he wouldn't have been able to do it for fear it would turn into a Steven King movie. Indeed... if ever there was a moment for the Red Devils to band together and collectively wish me ill, that was the moment!
As I am still able to type you will have surmised that I narrowly escaped with my arm intact. Not so much my jeans however which did suffer a slight mishap.
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| They jump out of the hay loft! |
I put up a plank of wood to block off their new nest and I thought myself so clever. And this afternoon I was proven wrong again. My ability to be clever in no way nears their ability to think up new ways to vex me. They are masters at it! So today I also had to go on another great egg hunt around the barn. The rotten hens were leaving them EVERYWHERE! I literally had to climb into the loft and through all of the hay bails to pull out their secreted stash.
Might I mention I got a huge fright when one of the Red Devils decided to fly out of the loft hatch to avoid capture? I thought for sure she would be a flattened pile of feathers on the ground but nope... these things are worse than cats for lives!
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| A good Red Devil |
Tomorrow is a new day and I must come up with a new plan to out smart my free range Red Devils.
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