Life with chickens in the coop

I just thought I’d share a few minutes of chicken owning goodness with you today.

Even though I’ve owned chickens off and on for most of my life, is it totally strange that I could still sit outside all day and watch my chickens run around after each other, scratching, clucking, and making us giggle?

Every time we go out to the coop two of our hens,  Tweet (L) and Goldie Hawn (R), are sitting in two nests side by side.

Sitting on empty nests. Like dorks.

They think they want to go broody but that is kind of hard to do when you’re sitting on nothing but straw and feathers. Silly girls. When we toss them out of their empty nests they make a big fuss and puff up as if they’re already big bad scary mommas. Tweet runs around clucking her little head off and as Pie says, Goldie Hawn just looks plain crazy like a turkey.

{so here’s a little video of the chickens in the yard, sorry for the awful quality!}

Usually the chickens aren’t kept locked in their boring dirt yard that you see int he video. When they’re being good chickens they get to free range in the lawn and back field all day. It’s wonderful looking out the window to watch them piddling around under the trampoline or perching on top of the picnic table.

What’s really NOT so wonderful is going outside to find that they’ve just destroyed, and absolutely demolished, your freshly weeded flower bed (3 hours to weed that bed!) and just for good measure, they’ve also flung two newly planted squash plants, a tomato plant AND one of your pretty columbine plants from their homes and eaten them.

This does not make momma happy.

This makes momma lock said renegades back into the boring dirt yard then furiously pound stakes around the perimeter of said flower bed and encase it in a horrendous looking triple layer of bird netting.

Chickens are fun like that.