Chicken Run!

The other day - we had a real life chicken run!  I lifted the roof of the hen house to do some cleaning, and two curious little birds jumped right out of the house!  

And at first - it was a pretty good time!  Little Ruby and Prissy had a really nice time exploring their new environment!  Here they are scratching under their nice house!  You can see how the roof props open for easy cleaning and egg collecting!  These little birds love to explore!

And it really is funny to watch them waddle around, scratching at the dirt, sometimes concrete.  And I don't know if stubborn is the right word, or simple minded, but once little Ruby bird decides there is an area that she is going to explore, this little bird is going to get her way, despite my half hearted  attempts to shush her out of the way!   I was trying to keep her out of the trees and into the alley that you can't see, but she was having too much fun to listen to me!  

It probably doesn't say really great things about my assertiveness that I get over run by a couple of hens!!  

At some point, I think they even thought about escaping right over the fence!  

Now it's time for the little hens to go back inside while I went and met my family for lunch.  Little Ruby is pretty easy to lure - if you just throw down some of her favorite grainy scratch, she'll come right over to you!  And at this point, you just grab her and put her back in the chicken coop.  

But Little Prissy Bird...she's not as "motivated" by food as her sister Ruby.  And while she *might* be tempted by some scratch, she's not going to come near you to get it!  

You can tell that she was frustrated and didn't want to be the only little bird exploring: poor little Prissy just kept running along the perimeter of her chicken run, looking longingly at her sisters who were clucking in the security of their environment.  She wasn't really aware of the open gate, and she could just jump her little self inside.  She just roamed along the perimeter, squawking unhappily!

And in case you wondered, I did try to negotiate with Little Prissy Bird - but she really wasn't listening to my reasoning.  And in a surprising act of agility, she even flew herself up to the top of chicken coop!  I didn't know that she could fly so high!  (She is handsome on the top of her house, isn't she?!)

And finally - after corning her twice (because the first time she flapped, I got scared and let her go!) - I finally got my little Bird back in her house and run.  

Mark's suggested for their future outings, we put them on a leash!  Stay tuned!