Separating the hens

We had quite a week. Hilda and I put up a chick fence inside the coop run on Tuesday and separated the laying hens from the straight runs in the evening. We could put the hens right in Coop 1 for the night, which would teach them where they were supposed to sleep. Also, chickens are supposed to be easier to catch when it gets dark because they don’t have good night vision. As with so many other things, the chickens had not read the book. Or perhaps it wasn’t dark enough. As long as we were at it, we resolved to clip everyone’s wings in hopes of curtailing the escapes over the chick fence.

It didn’t go too badly. We moved the Silver Polish and the Araucana first. We grabbed them one at a time, clipped their wings, and put them in a big black plastic bin with a lid. They did seem to calm down once they were in complete darkness and did not try to escape when we opened the lid for the next hen. When all five were in the bin, we carried the bin to Coop 1 and put them in it.

The life and death decisions were next. Sadly, explaining the implications did not cause any of the Welsummer of Buff Orpington hens to volunteer for laying duty. We grabbed whomever we could. In addition to wing clipping, we put leg bands on N – 1 of each variety (i.e., 2 of the 3 Welsummer and 3 of 4 Buff Orpington – not  having a leg band counts as an identifier if all the others have one) so we could keep them straight if we had too. We haven’t gotten around to naming them yet. We’ve been busy.

After installing these hens in Coop 1, we shooed all the remaining chickens out of Coop 2 and shut the door. One by one, we caught and clipped the wings of the roosters and unlucky hens and put them in Coop 2 for the night. It was dark enough by this time that they settled on the roost and did not try to get back out every time Hilda opened the door. When we checked on the hens, they were settling in also.

The hens' first night in Coop 1

Unlike the chickens, I was not ready for bed after all the excitement. I went to bed anyway because it was time, but could not fall asleep. Some nights are like that.

What were we thinking, moving the hens the night before Hilda was going to be alone with them all day? Terry and I left early Wednesday morning to take a trip to Chicago. We like to take in a show now and then, and MCC’s bus tours are both convenient and not that much more expensive than taking the train down. Despite dire warnings of snarled traffic, we got downtown in record time, leaving us two and a half hours for lunch. It was a stunningly gorgeous day, warm (but not hot) and sunny. We walked to Millennium Park where we saw a new sculpture of a giant head.

Giant elongated head sculpture

We took a picture of ourselves reflected in The Bean.



Self-portrait in the Bean. We are in the center. Terry is wearing a yellow ball cap and dark pants.

A musical group which I presumed was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was rehearsing in the band shell. The only reason I knew they were rehearsing is that they started over on one of the numbers. Other than that, the quality of the performance gave no indication that it was just practice. They were doing jazz with a woman singing and a man singing and playing the trumpet (not at the same time). We sat down and listened for two numbers.



Rehearsal

We walked through the prairie garden.



Prairie garden

I was surprised to see the entrance to Taste of Chicago at the south end of the prairie garden. I thought it was farther down in Grant Park. We weren’t up to facing the crowds, however, and went to the Berghoff for lunch. We got there ahead of the lunch rush and were seated immediately in a nearly empty dining room. By the time we were done, people were waiting for tables. It was a good lunch, although Terry confided to me later that his beer had been warm.

We still had some time to walk around before we were due at the theater at 1:30. We sat in a little park in front of a bank for the last 10 minutes or so watching people.

The show was The Last Ship. Not my cup of tea, really. My impression is that most of the stuff coming out of England these days is not exactly happy-go-lucky, what with the economic collapse and all. I found the premise lame. A shipyard is closing, and the workers decide to build one last ship using money that the local priest misappropriated from the collection to repair the church’s roof (or something—closed captions would have been helpful) and sail it around the world. Really? What are they going to use for the operating fund? And only one guy, the bad boy who left 15 years previously to become a sailor, knew anything about sailing. The performance was professional, I’ll give them that.

We got home a little after 7:00. I asked Hilda how the day had gone. Not well. Clipping the wings had not prevented escapes from either enclosure. We would have to put more posts in the chick fence around Coop 1 because it was sagging. The girls loved the kennel, spending the day in and on top of it. She noticed in the afternoon that the girls were not going into the coop. She put the food and water in the run, and they ate and drank greedily. She had spent the day worrying and chasing chickens. She was dispirited. Could I help her get the chickens in the coops in an hour?

Of course. At 8:30, we shooed the chickens into Coop 2. Easy. The girls, on the other hand, had not gotten the idea of roosting in the coop. Three of them were roosting on top of the kennel. No, no, you need to be inside. They were easy to grab, at least, since it was getting pretty dark by then.

The next morning, I suggested that we just leave them inside all day. I had to go to work for meetings all day, and that seemed easier. They would learn where the food and water was. Friday morning we put in two more posts before we let the girls out. It helped, but we are still chasing chickens more than we’d like (i.e., more than never). Our current hypothesis is that they are escaping in the gap between the chick fence and the coop. At least they are going in and out of the coop to get eat and drink and are going in at dusk to roost. Here’s a video of opening the coop on Friday morning.