Red chickens can be clueless, as I discovered tonight just as the sun was setting.

 

I had to rescue three of them from the goat pasture.

 

Now, to be fair, I have only started letting all the hens out of their hen pasture during the day recently (after they’ve laid their eggs every morning) because their hen pasture has been eaten down by them and there isn’t any native noshing left other than worms and grubs and,  after eating their store-bought chicken food, they always want ground-based treats. So I open the gate to the hen pasture and let them come out to forage on the lawn, in the flower gardens (because they love to eat the weeds that manage to survive the winter months), and in the goat pasture.

 

But I have never placed any of the hens in the goat pasture. They get there on their own by entering near the goat shed where the fencing spaces near the ground are large enough to allow hen-sized animals through.

 

The black hens — two of whom have been getting themselves out of the hen pasture for months every morning by jumping from a chair to the wire-enclosed/predator-proof “coop” to the ground — have never found themselves stuck behind the goat fence. They know where the access spot is and they know they need to go back there to leave when it’s time to head for the roost in the enclosed/predator-proof henhouse area.

 

But three of the red hens are presently clueless!

 

Tonight I got busy doing something until nightfall was scant minutes away from bathing our place in pitch darkness. When I finally realized I had probably less than ten minutes before pitch black to shut the hen pasture gate and lock the inner predator-proof gate, I figured the lay-dies had all put themselves to bed in the henhouse already. So,  I went out there not warmly-dressed to simply lock the predator-proof gate, only to discover that three of the red hens were clucking in a disconcerting manner, trying to figure out how to get out of the goat pasture and into the hen pasture to reach their nighty-night place. (This didn’t happen last night, so I wasn’t anticipating this ditzy hen problem.)

 

Well!  I tried getting the errant hens to follow me along the goat fence to where the access place was, but they weren’t having any of that. They came a little way, but wouldn’t come all the way, even with bribes of bread crumbs (which the goats were also competing for, naturally).

 

So I went into the house and dressed more warmly — because by now I was pretty much a Pop-sicle — and then I returned to them, hoping they had figured it out while I was inside insulating like an Inuit.

 

Nope. 

 

So, I went into the goat pen, which made the goats very happy, so they accompanied me to the red hens, who were still trying to figure out a way to get through the predator-proof fencing into their henhouse. (Not the sharpest tools in the shed, these lay-dies.)

 

I knelt down to get one of the hens; she crouched (the way they do for roosters) to allow me to pick her up, so I lifted her over the fence and put her into the back yard, thinking she would find her way home from there.

 

Did the same thing with the other two.

 

Brailled (since it was pitch black by now) the goats goodnight and left the goat pasture

 

When I got into the back yard, there were the red hens, still outside the predator-proof enclosure, trying to figure out how to get through it into their henhouse.  (*sigh*) The gate to their pasture was wide open, so I clucked to them to see if they would follow me (as they usually do during the day) but because by then night had fallen, they weren’t responding to anything I did or said; they were just standing there, probably feeling doomed. (“We are coon and coyote chow now, dear friends. It was nice while it lasted. Alas…”)

 

Hero Kris to the Rescue!

 

So, I tried getting behind them and herding them toward the hen gate, and then I tried bribing them with food to follow me.  Nope.  They were feeling condemned and hopeless.

 

So, I had to pick them up again and carry each one through the hen pasture gate and to the open door of the predator-proof pen.  As soon as I put each of them down there, they made a beeline for their henhouse. (“We’re saved!  Hallelujah!!!”)

 

What I learned:

 

I need to set  a timer this time of year and be sure I go out there to corral them well before sunset.  This o dark thirty gathering of tardy, clueless hens is for the birds!

 

Oh, the joys of backyard chickens… 

Update: Just heard from a longtime chicken tender that chickens will behave just the way mine did after dark if they can’t get back to the roost and can’t fly up anywhere to roost.

 

They hunker down and get still and quiet to avoid being found by predators, I suspect. So, now I really need to be sure to get out there before dark and make sure they’re all in at night, because if I had gone out any later I might even have known there were some still out and about… Awful thought!