Farm Friday, July 19th, 2024
The barn chicken who thinks she is a llama
We have a chicken who thinks she is a llama.
Every night we check on all the animals. During the check, we shut the door to the chicken coop and turn off the lights. Then we go to the barn and give sweet feed treats to the llamas and sheep and check on their water situation and then shut the barn door and turn off the lights. It is a ritual that tucks in the farm for the night.
This Spring we started to have one chicken who consistently wasn’t in the coop when we checked. Instead, she would roost on the fence inside of the red barn. The red barn is not necessarily a safe place for chickens because a predator could get in any number of ways. So I would pick up this chicken and bring her to the coop.
Picking up a sleeping chicken is surprisingly hard. First, she wakes up when I turn on the barn light. Second, she can see me coming to get her and will jump down and wander around the barn. This is concerning because if she goes outside and I don’t catch her, she is even more vulnerable than she would have been inside the barn.
So she and I would play a game. I would turn on the light and see where she was roosting, and then turn it off again. Then I would walk in the darkness to the place where she was roosting and reach out…
