Tonight was the night the Not-Buffs were smuggled into the main flock's coop while everyone was asleep.
The best time to move a chicken is while it's sleeping. Chickens sleep deep. The best time to move a chicken into a new flock is while they're all sleeping. Everybody wakes up in the morning, scratching and yawning and still half-asleep, and no one is really sure that they don't know that chicken they woke up next to. (Chickens aren't all that bright when they're wide awake. When they're sleepy, well... they make wide-awake chickens look like regular Einsteins.)
The fact that their pens have been side by side all this time should help with the 'recognition' illusion - they've had lots of time to stare at each other and get familiar.
We're crossing our fingers that the merger will go smoothly.
The main reason for the big push at unification? We only have two chicken waterers. In the summertime, that's fine - one for each pen. But in winter, when the waterers freeze overnight? It's too big a pain in the butt to thaw two waterers every morning, especially when we're trying to get ourselves off to work. With one pen, we only need one waterer, and we can swap out the frozen one with the one that had been thawing since the previous time we did chores.
Not to mention, feeding and watering one group of chickens is less time-consuming than feeding/watering two groups.
Efficiency R us...
6 comments:
(I thought the not-Buffs were roosting rather than sleeping somewhere accessible?)
And it all sounds like a stealth operation :) rising in the middle of the night, to sneak up on the chickens, carefully not making any noise, rearranging the furniture and then leaving ... or some college prank on a drunken dormmate.
Good luck with that!
I don't care what anyone says, I love hearing about the chicken escapades. Frankly, I'm jealous of your access to real eggs (as opposed to those palid things you buy at the grocery store). Free range eggs rock!
Oh, those not-Buff, what will they get up to next? Sneaking into the main flock's dwelling and being all "Who, us? We've been here all along. You must have been smoking something" and then stealing their waterer.
Gotta watch out for those not-Buff...
How did it go? Everyone okay today?
Just imagine how much fun you would have if chickens were smarter. o.O
xo
We've talked about getting more chickens, but we weren't sure if it would work or exactly how to do merge them. Thanks for this post! We may have more chickens come spring.
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