Yesterday evening the weather was wild. The wind came up and then it *pounded* rain. The kids and I were on the far side of town and I felt anxious for the chickens in their new coops, so we headed home & checked on them. The tarp had blown around and messed up part of the roof (but only busted the hog-rings not the wire, so it should be fine, we’ll have it good as new in no time).

The chickens were wet and huddled and scolded me because THINGS WERE VERY STRESSFUL AND THERE WAS A SITUATION!!! until I got the tarp back in place at which point it was like flipping a switch and the chickens collectively relaxed and were like oh, time to eat, yeah, no bigs.

So then I came and checked on the box chickens (they got that name because they are waiting for their coop to be made by hanging out in a rectangular chicken tractor that gives them access to new ground every day and protects them from predators but which also looks like a box). The box chickens had wet heads and were actively getting rained on, but were also like, time to eat. So I felt relieved and actually ended up taking care of a few things and heading back to town.

On the way home from town the sunset was so pretty that my son took a video of it, but even that didn’t help it register to me that I needed to have put those chickens to bed!

(Note: During the day, we keep the door open and they forage in the yard inside a loop of portable [solar!] electric fencing to keep predators out. At night we shut them in the box since chickens are so vulnerable when they’re sleeping. This was their first night in the box.)

When I got back and looked in the box, there were 8 of 31 birds.

Oh dear.

That meant some chickens were in the trees.

It took me an hour to find/get all the chickens safe. Nice team-building exercise for me and the birds. I did set an alarm on my phone to put the chickens to bed a touch earlier for the next night. Goodnight chickens.