Chaos on the farm….

There’s always some kind of chaos when you live on a farm. That chaos can be in the form of protecting the livestock or garden from predators, or it can be with a simple decision you made previously.

Let me explain, a few weeks ago we had a major thunderstorm roll in somewhere around midnight. The new chicks were around three weeks old and I wanted to move them to a bigger coop. So I revamped the baby coop I used to use and placed them in there that day, I didn’t think about a storm rolling in. The storm begins and my husband, Steve, went out to close the tonneau cover on his truck bed. He comes in telling me I need to check on the new chicks, the tarps are blowing all over the coop. It was raining hard enough, I literally had to drive my truck the 50 feet to the coop. I ran over looking in the coop and the girls were all huddled up and shaking. I grabbed a box and put all 25 of them in there and took them to the house and put them back in the brooder overnight with a heater hoping that they would all survive. Thankfully they did.

The next day, the weather was calling for more rain and the brooder I had set up in the kitchen was not giving them enough room to move around. I had a couple of dog crates in the barn, so I set one up, put their feed and water with some hay for them. The one thing I didn’t think about was, there was no tray in the bottom of the dog crate. A week later, I had the coop revamped and it was time for the girls to go back in their coop. So I took the box I had them in when the storm was raging, placed them in there and took them to the new coop.

Yesterday, I was ready to move the grow out coop back closer to the hens. I had it in front of the barn due to needing a heat lamp. This is where the one decision I made prior to this move would have been a great idea had I remember there was NO tray in the bottom of the dog kennel, just hay. I was still oblivious to this, I took the crate up, shooed all the girls into that crate and moved the coop. Steve was on the tractor and we decided to use the bucket to move the girls. All was well until…………he began to pick up the bucket and we had several girls fall through the bottom!

Chaos erupts with the 2 year old hens out foraging and the girls at five weeks finding new found freedom. In a panic, we get the girls left in the crate to the coop. That left 8 girls out and running free, and they loved that freedom so much that when I went to catch them, nope they all took off running! Not only were they quick when they ran, but they were smart about hiding. It took me close to an hour to chase all seven and get them back in the coop. I had one run through the main fence and decide she wasn’t going in easy. Frustrated, hot and out of breath, I went inside.

The hens were allowed to stay outside until 6:30. I was sure that the baby had been picked off by a predator, however, she was standing in front of the baby coop. It took me half an hour and her zipping her lil tailfeathers in a pocket of the tarp and getting stuck before I finally got her in.

Lesson of the day………always check the crate or container you are transporting the chicks in before you lift it off the ground……