Go To Bed Chickens!

 

Go to bed chickens, it is getting darker and the sun has fallen below the edge of the earth.  

Go to bed chickens, the farmer's eyes are getting heavy and he doesn't want to watch you do your chickeny things any more today.

Go to bed chickens, there will be moths to chase and food to eat and eggs to lay in the morning.

Please... just... go to bed chickens.

The laying hens have now spent three nights in the Summer Cottage out by Crazy Maurice, the Weeping Willow tree and resident tree-friend to farmers.  That means the hens have had two nights to test the farmer's patience in a new location as they dawdle about trying to decide if it is time to... go to bed.

The first installment of a short, three-part series is shown above.

The second installment is shown below:

The nice thing about chickens is that they typically will go back to the place where they woke up in the morning.  This makes moving hens relatively easy.  Though there is always an exception or two to the rule that you might have to deal with.  That's why I was maybe a little bit more interactive with the last few birds in the videos.

You see, we have had some adult laying hens decide that the running gear under the Summer Cottage is a fine place to roost too.  While they might be fine there overnight because we have electric netting around their pasture, the birds that roost there often leave their shelter early enough to be in prime owl hunting time.

That reminds me of Clyde.  Clyde was a chicken and Clyde had guts.  We know this because an owl got Clyde one morning and the only evidence that Clyde existed at all were his... um... guts.  

Here's part three of the video series.

I was told by someone some years ago, when I made that joke in a blog, that it was in bad taste.  I am certain if Clyde were still with us, he would agree.  But I bring it up again to remind everyone who does not work with farm animals or nature quite as closely as we do that we witness some not so nice things.  It's part of life (and death) on a farm and one way to help yourself cope is by having some sense of humor about it.

And, by telling the chickens they really do need to go to bed.