Last night we moved the young’uns out of the veggie garden and into the chicken run. At dusk, I found them wandering disconsolately around the spot where the coop had been the day before, scratching out symbols in the mulch in an attempt to reverse the invisibility spell that had obviously been performed on their living quarters. Having sorted out that problem, I made a late breaking decision to grab Snowball from her highly exposed roost and throw her in with the others.
Public holiday sleep-in abandoned, I was up at dawn to watch the next gripping episode of “Chicken TV”. Who would be new Top Chook: Andy Ninja or the feisty contender, Treasure the Light Sussex? How would Snowball react after her night sleeping with strangers? Could there be peace between the two clans, or would blood be spilled?
Major turn-up in the pecking-order stakes: Treasure not only monstered little Snowball, but had Andy on the backfoot as well. The two veterans, driven together in a “spirit of the blitz”, paced up and down while the two most brazen of the new girls muscled in on brekkie. We took 2 weeks to train the older chooks to use the foot-pedal feeder: it took Shyla the Australorp about 10 minutes.
So much for getting the new birds for Andy’s mental health – she spent much of the afternoon in her usual haunts in the front garden, on her own or in the company of one of the brush turkeys. Snowball hung with the young team for a while, but it looks like it was a one-night stand in the coop – she’s back on her “fox appetiser” roost this evening. So I guess Chicken TV is the poultry Home and Away: mostly about the triumphs of good looking teenagers.