Whenever I have the treat tray (an upside down frisbee that the chickens see as a treat container) the chickens will follow me everywhere and squawk. They get really excited. Stephen and Yeager will sometimes jump up onto the frisbee to try and gets treats and right after they do that they fall. And treats go flying everywhere. It can get annoying when Stephen and Yeager are jumping around you.

Whenever I go outside the front door the chickens see me and run up to the gate. Stephen is always at the front and squawking really loud. REALLY loud. When we have a fire in our fire pit (which is close to the chickens) Stephen won’t stop. We’ll be sitting at the fire talking and Stephen is squawking as loud as she can right beside us. It gets annoying.

• This is what our chicken coop looks like. The chickens were dusting (getting the sand into their feathers to get bugs out) in the sand below the coop. Yeager was right under the door. I was sitting in a chair watching them. I saw a bee heading towards the coop, and saw Yeager looking up at it as it hit the door of the coop. Then it fell and almost landed on Yeager. Yeager freaked out and ran away super fast. Sand went flying everywhere. All the other chickens didn’t care about the bee. A few days later there was another bee, and it flew over all the chickens. Yeager ran away and the other chickens didn’t care. Yeager is scared of bees for some reason.

Yesterday it was a sunny day. When I let the chickens out they went into the warm sand and laid in it. They spent almost the whole time there. They were getting the sand up in their feathers. After around 25 minutes Stephen was done with it and got up and ate the grass. After a while she saw I was sitting down and ran over and jumped up on my lap. She stayed there and looked around for 5 minutes and I don’t know why she did that but it was funny.

Stephen and Yeager are the most mischievous chickens we have. They like to run up to the house but we don’t like them to do that because they poop everywhere. I stop Stephen and Yeager from coming on to the driveway so they don’t poop on it, and then they walk away and I look away for 5 seconds and they are sprinting over to the house. For some reason they know if I am looking or not. One time I had them out and the mail man came. He went to the door and Stephen and Yeager sprinted up to him. I have no idea why they wanted to see him. After the time that the chickens were attacked (Click HERE to see the post. It is in the second paragraph) they were all scared and hiding under their tree. The day after they were attacked some friends came over and the chickens all came out and were totally fine and Stephen and Yeager wanted to visit them. They just followed them around. I had no idea that they liked to see new people like that. But after they left, they went and hid again.

Today when I had the chickens out they went under a shelter. It wasn’t raining but for some reason they wanted to be under there. Whenever I go up to the house they would follow me. Since they were under the shelter and couldn’t see me I snuck up to the house to grab something. But Stephen and Yeager still saw me. They came running and flying up to see me. I didn’t want then to follow me but they did. Later they all went on to the driveway because it was a bit sunny over there. They all ruffled their feathers and just stood around in the sun. Eventually Stephen and Yeager got sick of it, and ran down the driveway to the road. It took a while for me and my 8 year old sister, Annika, to get them to stop and go back up into the yard. After a while they went up to the front of the house in the little garden area to have a dust bath. They stayed there for 20-25 minutes. I stood there waiting for them to finish dusting and that never happened. I had to stop them and put them into their area again because they had been out for a while.

 

Today was Stephen and Yeager’s first snow day! (was the second day sort of. There was another day with snow but it only stayed for a little while.) All of the chickens seemed to be totally fine with walking around in it, except Legolas and Tico did not like it at all. Rosy likes to eat the snow and frost. and Diggy just follows Stephen and Yeager around. All of them accept Stephen and Yeager go and hide under areas without snow and stay there the whole time I let them out into the snow. Stephen and Yeager run around doing whatever they feel like at the time. Stephen and Yeager are kind of random. Stephen and Yeager came over to me and squawked for a bit, so I would squat  down and pet them and then they would wonder off. Stephen and Yeager are so random.

Above: Stephen in the snow.

 

 

On a previous day I was out with the chickens, everything was normal. I was with three of the chickens, Rosy, Stephen and Yeager. The other chickens, Diggy, Legolas and Tico were just around the corner dusting in the dirt. Suddenly Yeager and Stephen flinched and froze. Then Yeager went to hid under a tree. I looked around in the sky looking for a bird that they might have seen flying far above them, and there wasn’t any that I could see. Then I went around the corner of the house and there was a large bird amongst them. As soon as the bird saw me it flew away, and then Legolas freaked out and I had no idea where she went. And Stephen and Rosy went and hid under the same tree as Yeager. My mom came out because she heard the the chickens squawking, and I told her what had happened and she helped me look for Legolas. After a while I saw the bird go from one tree to the tree that Yeager, Stephen and Rosy had gone under. I didn’t realize that what it was doing because I was worried about Legolas. After that happened Stephen, Yeager and Rosy came flying out from the tree squawking loudly. Then Yeager went and hid and I couldn’t find her either. After a few minutes of looking for them, Yeager came out from the bushes, and she was fine. I kept looking for Legolas and eventually found her tale sticking out from one of the dense bushes. She was hard to get out, and she was shivering and scared. Eventually we got her out and she was fine and they all went back to their run and hid under their tree.

-January 6 2015

 

Before all of this I let them out once, and a bird came down to the chickens. Everything was normal, I was following 3 of the chickens and the other three were around the corner of the house. Then the three I was with flinched and froze. I stood there for a while looking around for a bird flying around (because they do this sometimes when there is a bird far above them) and there wasn’t. I went around the corner of the house to check on the other ones when there was a loud squawk. I saw a bird about the same size as them standing there and it flew away as soon as it saw me. Stephen, Yeager and Rosy ran under a big tree. I found all of the chickens except for one, Legolas. My Mom came out because she heard them squawking, and helped me look for Legolas. I saw the bird fly over to the tree, but I didn’t realize that it was the tree that Stephen, Yeager and Rosy were under. Later Stephen, Yeager and Rosy came flying out from the tree. Then I lost Yeager because she was hiding. I found Legolas after a long time and she was under a bush hiding. I could barely see her. They were all fine in the end, just scared.

On May 21, we got two new chicks! We named them Stephen and Yeager.

We put these 2 or 3 day old little girl chickens into a big plastic bin for their home… lol. At first Yeager was pecking Stephen’s eye and so we had to separate them. Which neither Stephen or Yeager. We put the food and water in the middle of the bin and cut a wire mesh to fit around them and that is how we separated them. Quickly Yeager squeezed through in between the water dish and the wire mesh to get to Stephen so we had to add some cardboard to make it a tighter squeeze  in between the water and the mesh. We had to go out of the house so we had to hope that what we had done was good enough. Of course when we got back they were together. They weren’t pecking each other anymore though. We took out the separating mesh after that. A couple days later they started jumping up onto the water holder. Our first chickens didn’t do that until they were a few weeks old. -July 29 2015

We started to take them outside a few weeks later. Let them out of their cage and eat some grass, and also interact with the other chickens, they were separated but they could still see each other. Pretty soon after that, we were going to florida, so we had to try to get the chickens to be friends. We let them out into the yard all together, and Legolas walked over to the chicks, and ripped some feathers out. They didn’t stay out together for very long. Since we were going to florida, we had to make sure that Stephen and Yeager had enough space. We split the coop in half with wire mesh, and then put some in the run as well. They had plenty of space. When we got to florida, we checked the chicken cameras, and we couldn’t find Stephen and Yeager on them, all we could see, was that the wire mesh was shaking. My dad called a friend to see if they could check on them, and so he went and checked. They had jumped over the 5.5 foot wire mesh, they just needed to be with the others. Our friend put them on the right side again, and then extended the mesh taller. He walked away for a bit, and then came back, and they were on top of the mesh. He said it looked like they were grinning at him. So at that point we just let them be together, since they were so desperate. When we got back from florida two weeks later, they were still alive, so whatever. Now (December 2015) they are very mischief. We have moved to a bigger property (five acres) and they have lots of space to run around. But they don’t care, hang around the house and poop everywhere. Yeager is very attached to Stephen, and hates to be without her. Sometimes Stephen will walk away from Yeager, and Yeager will jump/fly over to her (up to 25 feet :O) and they are chickens! They aren’t supposed to fly…

Recently I put a bunch of stuff in front of the concrete so the chickens could not get on because when they do get on they poop and it is messy. So now we can just let them out into the yard all day and not worry about it. So since they were out so long four of them went behind the shed and into the herb garden and around the trampoline and stuff. The other two were fine because they had each other, and I don’t think they knew where the others were. Today we let them out and five of them went behind the shed. Eventually I heard a big squawk from the back yard and I checked and it was Legolas who seemed to be scared and was going back to the run, So I went out to bring her to the others and as soon as I went out the others came out. SO ANNOYING!!!

Nov. 17, 2014

Today I went to see the chickens and let them out for a bit. They all came on my lap once. So I went to get Rosy on my shoulder and she did just fine. Then Eggward wanted treats so she jumped on to my head and scared Rosy and Rosy got scared and jumped off, and then Eggward got scared and jumped. Then I went to get a chicken on my arm and normally Omelette gets on. She did after a while but it took some time. Omelette is trained more than the others so she is okay with being pet and she likes to stay on your lap or arm. So when I tried to get her off she didn’t get off. I squatted so she could easily get down, but she didn’t. I put the treats over my lap away from her and she just got on to my lap and got the treats, I couldn’t put the treats down because of all the other chickens, so it was very hard. I slowly moved the treats to the right away from her and she fell in between my legs.

 

Apr. 8, 2014

For a while it had been bugging me that Diggy hat poo all over her butt and all of her fluff (butt feathers) was being pulled away from her but so she had a big bare spot. So I got my dad to clean her last week and we did. We got a bucket and filled it with warm water and got Diggy and put her in the bucket and she wasn’t happy at first. I was holding Diggy’s wings down as my dad cleaned her butt (with gloves) and after a while she was calm and I loosened her wings and she jumped out. It was hard to catch her again but I got her. This time she was more okay with it and seemed very calm. After we were done she jumped out and started to groom her feathers into the right spot. It was hard for her to do it. I put them away and left. The next day I went to see her and her butt and it looked normal.