Checking in with the chickens

We've started letting the chickens free range for a few hours at a time, and they seem to love pecking around in the leaves and chasing bugs. They're still cowardly enough to want to stay together in a pack most of the time. It's pretty funny when one chicken chases a bug farther than usual and then panics and sprints back when it realizes that it's 50 feet away from all its friends. They're getting friendlier toward us, though, and come over to check us out when we visit. They're very interested in my toes when I'm in sandals, which makes me pretty nervous because I'm sure they don't know the difference yet between appendages and grubs. But I haven't actually been pecked yet.

The black chicken you can see clearly in this picture is one of the roosters. Both hens and roosters grow combs, the red fleshy part on the forehead, but the roosters are developing them much more quickly. They're also getting to be a little bigger than the other birds. We're trying to make sure the roosters are comfortable with us as they grow up so that they don't become hostile and try to protect the hens from us. When I first went home with Mike back in college, his parents had a crazy old rooster that would attack people, so Mike  had to bring a foam pool noodle outside with us as a defensive weapon in case the rooster was feeling feisty. I don't want that to be necessary here.

The first few evening we let the chickens out, we worried that they didn't yet know to get back into the coop at dusk, so we had some exasperating times chasing them around and trying to herd them inside. But we figured out that if we wait until it's actually dark, they do indeed put themselves to bed where they belong. So far they seem to be ignoring the roost perches I built for them in favor of sleeping in a 1 sq ft area, piled on top of each other. But they're still growing pretty quickly, so that won't be an option much longer.