Gate to the Run: Open

I’m not sure what alerts them – surely not my footsteps on the damp grass – but as I round the rhodies that screen their coop from our garden, the girls begin to cluck me a morning welcome.  I call “Good morning!  It’s a gorgeous day!” back to them, open the gate to the run and then open the door to the coop.

Door to the Coop:  Open

Out they march, down the ramp, one-by-one.  Some go right to the water container for an early morning drink.  Our saucy alpha hen, has her head inside the can of scratch before I can retrieve it from where I set it down.  (Unlatching their coop door is a two-handed operation.  We’re pretty sure it would flummox four-footed critters – even those clever raccoons – but it has yet to be put to the test, Farmer Nyel’s reinforced hog wire around the perimeter of the run has kept those relentless bandits at bay (ahem!) for several years now.)

It’s a gorgeous day for free-ranging.  The gate to the run and their water supply will stay open all day.  Ditto the coop door which gives them access to their food and to the nest boxes.  I check those every day, even though the girls aren’t laying much right now.  Sometimes, we get a surprise – like the other day when there were three eggs in one of the nest boxes!  Wow!  A wintertime bounty for sure.

I think that we are having those three eggs with ham and hash browns for lunch one of these days.  Eggs are considered “heart healthy” and so are the potatoes.  Ham?  Probably not so much but Nyel is allowed 1500 mg of salt a day and, according to the Heart Healthy diet folks, one slice of ham is 17% of that daily allowance.  Ham and eggs for a change is sounding pretty good!

Down the Ramp and Out for the Day

I always thank the girls for the eggs but I’m not exactly sure what to tell them about eating them.  Would it sound cannibalistic to them?  If they ate them, that c-word would definitely be the case.  I’m not sure if they understand that we aren’t chickens and that a scrambled egg for our lunch is okay.  But I don’t even consider telling them about things like the Parmesan chicken we had last night – even though we don’t intend to eat any of them, personally.  It just seems like ‘TMI’.

Foraging?

It’s tricky communing with chickens.  But, still… it’s a great way to start the day.