Training coop subdivision

Guinea update:  they did all survive the night, and again skipped dinner (thus not giving me the opportunity to attempt to trap them again) and went to roost where they did night before last, which they also survived.  So I'm just moving the GH as fast as I can to put them in it.It will still take awhile.  I'm interested to see whether it will take longer to take it down and then put it up again than it did for me to put it up in the first place.  If it were a house, then it's always faster to just build a new one.  I'm thinking the GH could be faster to move than it was to build new, but we shall see.  I'm also weaker and less healthy than I was the first time.I was in there half the day ripping it out, which meant a party of epic magnitude for the young chickens that live in there, the kegger that will not be forgot.They were always underfoot, interested in the volume of green mass I was dropping to the ground, and the climbing and rummaging and scratching was such as had never been seen before.  So good the room was mostly silent, with all the chicks individually occupied throughout.  They know every inch of the GH, it is their whole world, so change must be very interesting to them.Come dusk, I was still working, so I got to see the goings in.   I've been stuffing the chicks in the coop every night, and although there's plenty of room, they squabble all night.  What the?So I tried something new.  I tacked up cardboard, dividing the coop into apartment A and B, and I put a hen in each one.  One (mud head) is legitimately broody, I can't tell if the other one is for real, but she's acting as if.As it got dark, the Chanticleer chicks went to bed first, and they all came along one at a time, long-necking and then hopping up in with Mom.Or two at a time.This one chose wrong. And tentatively settled in.And then, RRTROWWR!  She came bursting out, having been forcibly ejected by the resident hen.  So she's been the nighttime rabblerouser; she doesn't like the chicks of another colour.The Chanticleers eventually all loaded in, to the right apartment.It's very cozy in there.  I don't know how they do it.That left the Silkies out, who much later started to think about bed, and went trouping around, looking like they might consider the possibility that they might sleep somewhere other than a pile in the corner.I spent some time trying to marshal them towards the coop, and grabbed a couple and tossed them into Apt A, but they kept missing it, and going around it, then going under it, and a few hopped in on their own, yay!  Definite progress.But I could've almost sworn I saw a white one dart into Apt B, which is already suffering overcrowding.  I groped around but couldn't find her, until I took a picture.Aha!  Lower right, the couchsurfer.I have some confidence that they will all go to bed tomorrow, or definitely the next night.  Unless the hens decide to switch apartments.

Previous
Previous

Greenhouse, moved.

Next
Next

Got 'em!