Houdini Chicken and a Construction Project

 I spent a lot of time on Amazon.ca looking at netting. The good kind that I wanted, that I knew would last and the size I needed was, of course, sold out and unknown when more would be in. Why was I looking at netting? Two reasons, well actually the first reason is more like four reasons. We have a resident family of red tailed hawks. Mom and the three juveniles fly over our property, calling out, throughout the day. They sit on top of our neighbour's roof. They sit on the rail fence that borders our property and stare at the chicken run. Mother hawk (I think) took a swoop down at Murphy! (He subsequently leapt up into the air and tried to get her).

The other reason I was looking at netting was a hen I have named "Houdini chicken". In all the years that I have had chickens, I have never had a problem with chickens flying out of our run. The fence around their run is four feet tall. The only one who ever flew out was a nasty little piece of work Banty rooster named Rusty (yes, Friendly Giant reference for my Canadian friends). 

However, one of the "new" hens, a lavender Orpington, has taken to jumping up on a fence post and then jumping down onto the lawn. We corralled her back into the run several times. I worried about her escaping into the acres of weedy brush to the west of us, or being eaten by a predator if she didn't return quickly enough, so I watched some videos on how to clip wing feathers. It doesn't hurt the bird and it makes them somewhat unbalanced in their flight attempts and keeps them more grounded. After one of her escapes, husband and I caught her and I clipped her flight feathers of her right wing (you only do one side). 

Then, a couple of days ago, husband felt generous with his time and energy and began to build a structure over the chicken run in order to enclose it with a chicken wire roof (better than netting). I helped as much as I could.

Here's a progress pic so far. He had previously built (and refurbished) the chicken coop for me as well. 

Much more work has been done since I took this shot a couple of days ago. You can see the hens eating and scratching around. Please note the one whitish/grey chicken farthest to the right, facing outward. She will feature prominently in the rest of the post.

Let me introduce you to Houdini chicken. Here she is frantically pacing back and forth along the fence line. On this particular construction day, she was acting positively neurotic. Her beak was open (no, it wasn't too hot, no she wasn't lacking water), she frequently pushed her head through the openings in the wire fence, and regardless of wing clipping, she was able to do this:

Yup, with some upward estimating and some good knee flexing, she flapped her way up to the top of the fence post. MANY TIMES. I would turn her around and she would jump back down into the run with the other chickens. After jumping up to the fence post maybe four or five times, I actually held her , stroking her little chicken head, feeling her heart beating out of her chest, and asked her what the issue was. She had a good life here, everything she could want, was it because the grass was literally greener on the other side of the fence? 

Anyway, chicken neuroses aside, husband continued to build and I continued to help, and at one point we were on the other side of the run and Houdini chicken jumped up and out AGAIN and I was just too damn tired of her foolishness to go get her, so we finished up whatever we were doing and after a minute, husband asked where she was. I didn't see her but figured she couldn't have gotten far. We started to look for her and in true Houdini style, she had disappeared. 

I have a couple of perennial beds that are parallel to each other and form a pseudo walkway of grass between them toward the chicken coop. I started parting plants and looking to see if maybe she was hiding in there. And eventually, look what I found:

There she was, tucked under a day lily, contentedly "purring" and not bothered by the fact that I had discovered her. Then upon closer inspection, I saw some broken egg shell under the same flowers. This was actually her nest! She laid an egg in there, popped out of the perennial bed and went straight back toward the fence, whereby husband opened the gate for her and she went right back in as happy as could be. There were, in fact, three other broken egg shells in there. Unbeknownst to us, she had been "flying the coop" regularly, laying her egg, and flying back in. (I'm not sure why the eggs before this were broken, either something had discovered them and eaten the contents, or her first few attempts at eggs had brittle shells).

Alas, for those of you forward thinkers, we realize that the chicken run will very soon be enclosed from the top with sturdy chicken wire. I am already anxious about Houdini chicken's future stress levels. (Yes, I know I have a problem). If I am home and in the yard and I see her pacing, I will just open the gate for her, let her out to do her thing, and then let her back in. Others have also suggested I transplant some daylilies in the run for her to lay her eggs in there, but for anyone who has ever had chickens, we know that chickens love nothing better than to scratch, dig dust bath holes and generally decimate all plant material in their runs. Eventually, I suppose, she will just have to suck it up and use a nesting box in the coop like everyone else, but it would seem she has some pretty strong "wild chicken instinct", escaping and finding a protected little hidey hold in which to lay her eggs. Ahhh, my life.

And on a different note, yesterday was my birthday and here is the cake that daughter and boyfriend arranged to me:

Isn't that a hoot! It was delicious! (carrot cake). 

Do share your own neurotic animal stories and the lengths to which you have gone for your own furry or feathered friends. (So I know I'm not alone).