Chickens and GPS, a marriage I forgot

Yes, chickens have a near perfect GPS built in to their little heads. I knew that.. I really did. But today I neglected to honor that point and the result is, a couple hours of chicken herding, chasing, catching, etc.  Let me explain...

It started because the suxxox  have managed to easily escape their fence. They actually pushed the wires apart on the chicken wire (we used the large weave wire to save money) and slip through at will. That presents a big problem becasue the new golden laying hens were only 50 feet away. When we went out to feed the goldens, the suxxux would escape the fence and run over to share a bite. The goldens, being mature birds, would not allow that and instantly gang up on the little half grown suxxox, sometimes 20 adult birds on one little hen. A very dangerous situation indeed.  So... I decided to move the goldens to the other pasture to give the suxxox some distance and room to roam without life threatening consequences.

Sounds like a good idea, right? well.. if only I had waited for nightfall.

I wanted to use the beautiful sunshine and moved the golden chicken trailer across the pasture in the afternoon. The first indication that I had made a bad choice was when I got halfway to the destination and the birds that were following turned back. Sure enough, as the sun set the situation got worse. The birds absolutely refused to leave the LOCATION that the trailer was in.  Their GPS kicked in and started "nesting" on the ground where the trailer was sitting for the day.

Hunter, Kaelyn and I spent a couple hours well into the dark evening herding, then chasing, than catching birds to move them to the new trailer.  IT was fun, but quite a challenging chore. We succeeded in all but about a half dozen that had nested up under the suxxox coop. We can get those tomorrow.

The point to the story is, chickens nest by GPS location, not surroundings. If you move their coop too far during the daytime they will refuse to use it and nest where it WAS insteaad, on the ground, a nice dinner snack for a predator.  The way to avoid this is to move hte coop at night, after they are all inside. Then all you do is.. move hte coop. The next day the wake up, their GPS is reset as they leave hte coop, and everything is perfectly fine.

So.. yea... note to self, never move a coop in the afternoon.

Oh my back!