Chicken Chores

The chickens were looking a little restless as I looked out at them this morning, pacing back and forth. This usually means they are out of food and/or water.

During the main growing season, our girls don’t get to free-range as much as they do during the winter, mostly due to the fact that they are all Destructicons and will devour anything in their path. A majority of their free-ranging is supervised, which basically means while we are outside to monitor them. This morning as I was feeding the dog, I noticed them all pacing the front of the coop’s run, a sign that they want out because something that should be in the coop isn’t. Going up to the chicken coop and letting them all out for a while, I noticed the waterer was empty.

Okay, so for some, this may not seem like a big deal, but I remember when we only had to fill that waterer once every five days or so. However, with ten girls in the coop, three of which are quickly becoming full sized hens, that number has dwindled down to every other day. I know this shouldn’t be too alarming to some, but perhaps this means I need to get back to my daily attendance to their chores. This doesn’t entail much, but rather doing a head count and checking the inside of the coop and henhouse for any problems that may have arisen, and of course checking their food and water daily.

And so now, even though it is technically still growing season, I’m becoming quite upset that we have a plethora of green tomatoes on the vines refusing to ripen (although not too upset, as this means a plethora of fried green tomatoes!) the girls are out free-ranging, unsupervised, and figure whatever they get to is theirs to eat. Of course, the first place they go to in the vegetable garden is the strawberry barrel, which I’m quite certain they’ve eaten more of than we have. Then again, if I were a chicken, I’d want to go after those delicious strawberries myself!