Relative Something

After a stressful Monday at the day-job yesterday, I was more than eager for a little chicken therapy when I got home. Cyndie and I climbed into the net-fenced courtyard for a leisurely visit with Rocky and his 11 pullets.

While enjoying the chaos, Cyndie and I talked over some ideas of how we might proceed with the merging of our young ones with the three hens.

This is our first chance to go through this experience. Interestingly, neither of us recall any details of the two previous times we have gone through the process of simply moving our same-aged broods from confinement to free-ranging.

Now we are at a point of doing that again, but with the added complication of simultaneously merging them with existing hens.

While we chatted and lingered with the birds, they began to mellow out. There was a bit of preening at first, and then a lot of settling down for a little afternoon rest.

That’s when I noticed two of the adult hens had settled down at the same time, just outside the fence. The main reason I noticed is that the New Hampshire pullet had wandered over to be right next to them, yet inside the fence.

It appears that the weeks of perching together in the coop every night, separated by that same netting, have achieved our goal of getting them comfortable with each other.

Soon, other pullets joined the New Hampshire until there was a group with one of each of six breeds snuggled together in the late afternoon sun for a little downtime.

I think this bodes well for our coming merger where we remove the divider in the coop and teach the youngsters the fine art of free-ranging the grounds during the day and returning to roost securely at night.

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