Off To Winter Quarters

Twirling tires tirelessly, the tractor tugs a tangled twist of tweeting chickens to their tidy winter retreat.

We prepared the winter quarters for the flock a few weeks ago in anticipation of their return to the coop. This past Saturday, since the weather was to be somewhat mild, the day had come.

First, we moved the pullets that have been in their own coop outside the barn. These are the females I kept from this spring’s incubation. They, along with two of their rooster siblings, were leg-banded for identifcation purposes, one wing clipped so they don’t fly out of the pen they are going to be taken to, and put into the cage for transport. We clip the wing because these birds have had netting over their outside pen to keep them from flying out. They are going to a pen with no netting, so they can’t be allowed to fly. Trimming only one wing will keep them off balance and unable to fly properly if they make an attempt to escape over the fence.

Next we cleaned everything up around the chicken tractor, rolled the electric fences up, hooked the tractor up to the chicken tractor and pulled it down from the field. I had to drive the tractor very slowly as the hens were still inside and I wanted to disturb their equalibrium as little as possible.

We made it down just fine without incident or injury. I backed the chicken tractor up to the rear of the coop then the hens were let out and back into the pen area of their winter coop quarters. Once they were out of the tractor and in the pen, Mike and I put the electric fence up around the permanent pen as there was a nice area of grass/weeds that they could chow down on before the grass goes dormant. We leave the gate open on the permanent pen so they can get out to the grass. Once they have that all gone, we will close the open gate (with the hens on the inside) and take the electric fence down to store it away for the winter.

This is a big day for us all. For Mike and I it means less time doing chores by not having to haul water and feed up to the field every day and not having to move the chicken tractor to fresh pasture for the hens. For the chickens, the two flocks have been combined. The older hens will be inter-mingling with the pullets and two roosters. They are one big family, but not one big happy family. They fight, they squawk, and face-off with the new flock members. This will go on for a while until the new pecking order has been established. The two young roosters have more than enough girls to make merry with for next spring’s eggs for the incubator. So the homestead’s chicken cycle goes on.

Wintertime will soon be settling in and we will be settling in with it. 🌡

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