fourth day....

Last night I went out to check on the girls, to make sure they had gone to roost, and they had, but had decided that access to the perches in the wire dog crate were better than clumping together safely in the plastic one.
I decided to chance it, because in the past, it has taken the local street gangs about a week before they noticed that I had chickens in the yard, and they tend to hunt less in the pouring rain.
My irresponsibility worked out, there were still 6 girls this morning, and so I let them out to forage, but they immediately headed for the forsythia and went to sleep in it.
A friend of mine who was a middle school teacher told me once that every class had a completely different group personality, and I am finding it to be true of groups of chickens too.  This bunch of hens is more low key than I expected.  They landed in the yard and have accepted everything without protest and have exhibited a general lack of adventurous spirit.  In the past, I have had fliers, escape artists and explorers, but these are thoughtful, companionable and quiet.  There might be more conversation when I find a rooster.
They are convincing me that they are to be named after authors instead of goddesses.... Jane, Charlotte, Emily, Alice, Maya Margaret and Zadie.

Chickens, part 3

3 nights of new chickens, who are both smarter and more insistent than they looked when riding home in the box.
First night, they slept in a crate on the front porch,
but I had forgotten how messy and smelly chickens can be in a closed room.
Next day I moved them outside, hoping to get them used to where their coop will be when I put it together, added a plastic dog crate to the wire one so that they could have a safe place to sleep and more room to spread out.
Day 3 I let them out to wander the yard a bit, they headed directly for the porch and mooned about in a rhododendron bush in front of it all day.
Today it is raining, and they are under tarps and umbrellas in the makeshit coop, this is going to be the story for about another 10 days.
It hasn't taken long for them to associate me with food.  I am realizing how incompetent having animals that depend on regularity makes me feel.
and as for names, well, they are probably going to be named for goddesses.

Chic Insomnia

So, I put the heat lamp into the coop and an hour later it was off, dead, no explanation.  The weather report was gleefully predicting overnight weather to compete with ice9, so alternatives had to be put in place.   I thought of going up to the storage space and hauling out the giant dog crate.  I thought if I put it in the cellar and could persuade them to stay there for the night, they'd be more comfortable but they are very suspicious of the cellar.  It must look to them like a place chickens go and don't come back.
What I did have was a gro light, so I replaced the burnt out heat bulb with that, and the girls immediately perked up and started an excited conversation among themselves, interrupting each other, losing their train of thought, changing the subject, shouting one another down.
Well. [I thought] at least they won't freeze to death....
The next morning they were awake and staring off into the distance like Hari Krishna devotees.
There were extra eggs in the bin, though.
Off to the hardware store to buy another heat lamp and an exterior grade fixture.  Worry about chickens being burned to death while captive were put at bay by the salesman who used to share his yard with chickens himself, and was too nice and gentle a  person for me to admit to having inadvertently murdered babychicks a couple of summers ago using a heat lamp.  I left with my reputation in tact and set up the light in the coop.
This worked, I woke up a few times in the night to look out my window to make sure there hadn't been a conflagration during the night, and this morning all was ticket-boo.
I went down to check on their water, and they had fouled it more than usual pushing each other around for the privilege of roosting on top of the heated container.  The were happy to see me though, and one jumped up on my arm, sat down and did not wish to leave.  I will assume, knowing how Avian Americans regard us featherless types as a nod to my body warmth and nothing more.

Freezer Burn

I suppose it is the sun that makes the girls feel as though it is worth putting a beak outside the coop, that and how tired they are of each other all ready and it's only January 7th.  "Two more months of inside living" I tell them, and they fix me with an unmoving avian gaze.  "brwaaaa...."  they mutter amongst themselves as though they think I don't know what they mean.
I bought a new heater for the coop this year; the one from years past made an interesting noise accompanied by a flash followed by some flickering before the cord melted at the point where it plugged into the exterior grade extension cord.
The new heater does not work.
The temperatures are predicted to be -30 or so tonight, I don't remember if that includes windchill, but who cares?  It's too damned cold, and I woke up every hour last night wondering if I was going to find chickens gone tits up in the morning.
They were happy to see me, surged around asking for treats, glad of the leftover rice, tactfully hiding the bits of cabbage under other bits of cabbage and making cheerful sounds.
How they can do this is beyond my understanding.  I just want to swath myself in electric blankets and sit somewhere with a nice book where nobody will ask me any questions for about a year.  Well... at least until it warms up a bit.
Remembering the painful and horrifying experience of killing baby chickens with a heat lamp, I was worried about putting one up again, but it's that or frozen chickens, so I'm hoping it is far enough away from them to not be a hazard, but enough to take the worst chill off for these Reds who are supposed to be winter hardy.  That might mean winter, but I don't think it means the kind of winters we are having lately, or this particular week.  The Avian Americans don't complain much or for long, but that doesn't mean they don't suffer.  My hope for this week is that they can get through it without tragedy as well as discomfort.

Cold Chicken

It is too much to hope for a mild winter after the last few days, and counting our blessings here that we are not in Buffalo [ just a little schadenfreude going on…] with a 5' snow fall and more to come.  Here it has just been damned cold, too damned cold for just before Thanksgiving, and the hens' first winter.  Maeve, Magda, Martha, Minerva, Morgan & Mary don't know what any of this means yet, having only hatched out of a nice warm nest 6 months ago, but Mista Woosta is coming up on his 3rd round, so his behavior might be understandable.
A cold, grey and nasty morning, frozen everything and the girls are still motivated to turn over any leaf possible to see if there's something they missed yesterday, he comes out briefly has a look around, nails a hen or two and goes back to the perch until the sun has thawed the air out a little more.
By noon, the girls are racing around, being followed at a stately pace by their not very motivated caretaker.
 If there's enough sun, they will clump together under a tree, being indistinguishable from the leaves and rouse themselves only if they see me, whom they have come to associate with the kinds of food they can't find on their own.
Candy bars, ice cream, cake and other specialties.
The heater in the coop has died, and I'm hoping the new one gets here soon.  Though I am told that chickens can take it, I can't sit here in a warm house knowing I have birds who are re-enacting Jane Eyre only a few feet away.

egg revolt

Last week, I found 3 eggs in the coop, the chickens didn't seem to know what they were, or how they got there and they stood around pointing at each other.  Since then, nothing, I had nearly come to the point of deciding to get some additional older chickens and go through the troublesome adjustment period so I'm wondering if it was ruse on the part of whomever is the mindreader in the flock.
They are a little past the time by which they ought to be producing.  I would not care for myself, but there are people in my house now that eat eggs on a regular basis.
These poor girls are having to put up with my reduced circumstances.  I can't afford to replace the coop heater that died last spring, so they are going to have to rely on their reputation of being winter hardy for a while.  I could maybe scare up some bales of straw and stack them around the coop for extra insulation, I know that if it were me, I'd be appreciative, I'm not very winter hardy myself.
This morning, The hens emerged into the sun followed closely by Mr. W, and Millie crouched to the ground.  He stepped over her to get to a hen who was less willing, and I thought to myself, I know relationships like that.

Progress not Perfection

The hens have begun to show a sign or two of avian intelligence, and it's a relief.  When they first came here, they acted like a group of abused girls, keeping quiet whenever I came on the scene and muttering behind their feathers when they thought no one was listening.
After being without chicken conversation for a couple of months it was disappointing.  I thought longingly of previous chickens who displayed invention, creativity and moxie.  Pearl, in particular, my lovely undersized iconoclast who I like to think gave the bobcat's kittens indigestion.
I hoped that putting an experienced rooster into the mix would liven things up a bit, but Mista Woosta seemed to believe that standing around looking insouciant in a beret was enough effort to justify the quantities of hens he'd been given charge of.
He doesn't take things seriously at all, and this from a chicken who grew up down a dirt road where there are plenty of coyotes and other rough trade.
I had to insist that everyone waste the last of the beautiful warm days staying confined to their adjacent yard, because when let to scratch about on their own, they wandered off and stood around gazing at objects I could not see.
I realize that as a human, my priorities are not in order, but when night fell, they were still standing around, staring off into space.
Mista, meanwhile, had said the hell with it, and gone to roost, leaving the hens to figure it out.
This would never have happened on Buck's watch.
At the end of the first day of freedom, there were 3 hens and a rooster in the house, making it necessary to hunt down the sillier ones who were nestled under trees.
I can report that they are beginning to get the idea, they are traveling in clumps, sticking close to the guy, talking a little more, I think I have even heard them singing once or twice - and today I found 2 eggs!
Sometimes inadequate parents produce successful kids, maybe the kids looked around early on and thought they'd better get their act together if they wanted to escape a repeat of the parental trajectory.  Maybe Mista Woosta subscribes to a similar laissez faire approach.  Still, the same number of chickens are here that came over a month ago.  I'm experiencing a dangerous optimism.