Moving Chicken HQ

Today I decided to move the chickens, the chicken coop and the chicken run to the summer prairie.  As I shooed the chickens into the coop for the move, one Cuckoo Maran turned fugitive. Here she is on the loose.  Look at her excellent form as she runs away in a poultry panic. She was out all day Sunday.  I offered her the chance to join her flock, to enjoy food and water but she wasn't having it.  At sunset she roosted in the lower branches of a spruce tree.  When we tried to catch her she flew off into the woods.  This morning, at 0600 I found her in the same spruce tree.  I got one hand on her and she took off again.  As of now she is still on the loose.  And I have spruce twigs in my hair.  I will have to get up earlier tomorrow.

As you can see, plenty of droppings accumulated since November.  It was nasty.

The manure carpet was four feet long, 2 feet wide, and in varying thickness up to 5 inches thick.  Nasty. The texture was like cake.  I could stick a pitchfork in it and lift five pound chunks of it.  This was some deep s**t. So nasty but it makes for good compost.  As I worked I spied a first of the year turkey vulture overhead, checking out the odor no doubt.



After the move all the captive chickens loved digging in the fresh soil and taking dust baths.



As I shoveled into the compost I remembered when I was a kid and I would ask my mother for something.  Suppose I wanted a certain lunch box or item of clothing.  Culottes for example. Culottes were all the rage back then. She would say, "If the other kids were jumping off a bridge would you jump off the bridge too?" Well, no. I would not jump off a bridge.  That would be too scary. How jumping off a bridge was equivalent to a popular lunch box I did not know.  Other requests of mine were answered with, "If the other kids ate chicken scheisse would you eat chicken scheisse too?"  See scheisse is the German equivalent of what I was shoveling today.  Does saying it in German make it any less nasty?  I don't think so but I was never confident in my answer because, to my knowledge, I had never eaten chicken scheisse and I wasn't 100% confident on what exactly it was.  I was pretty sure it had to be something terrible because of the nature of our conversation. After today, after shoveling 3 full blue boxes of manure, I feel I could answer that question with more confidence than ever before in my life.  I doubt anyone will ever ask me that any more.

I found a deep hole in my yard.  The opening is at least 4 inches and it goes straight down at least a foot.  Who is living here?

The winter headquarters looks a lot better now than it did!