How did the Chicken...

The chickens are consuming a lot of our time. How do you teach a chicken to cross the road? Actually they seem to figure out most things on their own.
We have been thinking of ways to make the chickens more useful. There has been a total absence of eggs and it crossed our minds that we had been sold a couple of duds.
We have started looking for alternative ways to get the girls to cover their costs.
A friend of ours recently came back from Scotland where he paid a lot of money to have a falcon land on his wife's arm.
Inspired by their ventures, Fred came up with a much cheaper option and it could be done here....chickening
We started by loading Blondie up on grapes.
Barbara prepares the bird for flight. Notice the protective glove, just like they had in Scotland.

Finally we have lift off.

We reckon the ongoing threats of ending up on the rotisserie and the failed attempts at being a chicken of prey put the fear of god in Blondie. Tonight - September 27th, 2010 someone (we suspect Blondie) produced the first egg.

So the question remains, how did the chicken know where to lay the egg. It was beautifully positioned inside the hen box, just like she knew all along.

An who says chickens are stupid.

Chickens

The chickens are growing up quickly and love being hand fed. Here is a picture of Tinker feeding the two girls chicken candy - mealy bugs. Chickens are very inquisitive and like to go just about anywhere they are not supposed to go. Leaving a door open in the house is an invitation to some house guests. I recently found Ginger and Blondie trying to figure out who the other two chickens inside the house were.

Fred decided that the girls needed to be contained in the back yard because the trail of chicken poop around the house was driving him nuts. He wired off the lower fence area and installed a 5 foot high gate between the veggie garden area and the back yard.

The chickens like almost anything Fred does, here they are inspecting Fred's trench digging skills. Observe the prison gate in the background to keep the chickens contained.

Unfortunately the girls didn't quite understand the purpose of the prison gate and soon figured out that it made an excellent perch. As well as keeping the girls safe off the ground the new perch had even more surprises in store. As the grapes matured on the vine the girls can graze on juicy california sun ripened grapes

Yum!