I slept until 3am.
No idea what woke me. Thought I could hear chickens, but I suffer from chicken tinnitus at night (so my ears hear chickens all the time, but the chickens aren't making a noise) so lay in bed trying to work out if it was real or not.
The rest of the night was disturbed.
This morning, Lotti was looking a little lost. Not surprising, as her sole friend and ally, Poppy, was shut up in the next door run. The two Broodies hadn't come out of the cube, so I assumed they were in there being broody. Later, I saw (and heard) Florence strutting around and grumping.
Later still, I went out to see if Lotti had laid. Once she's laid, I can shut the pop hole and then let the Broodies out to join everyone else. I was distracted from my task by noticing that Florence was still the only Broody to have emerged. I decided to get Poppy out myself.
Only she wasn't there.
I did a double take. I checked again. It was like something from a comedy. I could see she wasn't in the Cube, but I took the back off just to be sure. I looked in the run. It's 2.5 metres long. There was only one chook in it.
I remembered waking up at 3am.
I looked for signs of forced entry. At this stage, I was thinking it must be an animal predator, and I couldn't understand how only one of them had been taken.
And then I wondered.
I opened up the next box of the other Cube, and there she was. Fluffed up, grumping, telling me to go away.
She'd obviously found the flap that shuts the Purple cube off from the main run, probably by accident, and had barged through to get to her "rightful place" in the main cube.
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| Purple cube, flap shut, on left; orange cube, flap open, on right. Exit to outside in middle |
She's back in the Purple Cube run now; she and Florence are having an out-grumping competition. I've pegged the flap shut, and I've moved one of their garden-seat perches in front of it so it can't open.
I'm hoping Lotti will get on with laying so I can let them all out.
