Unsecure chicken perches

[Thalia]

I'm busy trying to introduce a lone hen, Selene, to two existing girls at the moment, as some of you will have read in my other posts.

 

For the last couple of days I've had all three hens in the eglu and run, putting Selene in the eglu to sleep if she was evicted at bed time. I had been free ranging one of the existing girls with the newbie, followed by both, with reasonable success (some minor chasing and with Selene at the opposite end of the garden most of the time) and thought that they were probably all ready to go in together. Unfortunately it appears that I was too quick with this and Hera, top chicken, has been attacking poor Selene when they've been in the run. So far no blood has been drawn but a few feathers have been pulled. Selene has been hiding in the eglu, too scared to come out.

 

This morning I decided that enough was enough, so I divided the run again and put Hera in one end with the temp coop and the other two in the eglu end. Selene and Aphrodite went off to free range together, whilst Hera was left in her end of the coop, looking a bit put out at this turn of events. Selene seemed to be having a pretty good time and Aphrodite was tolerating her being quite close and even using the favourite dustbathing spot.

 

I popped inside to make myself a cup of tea and re-emerged to find only Aphrodite strutting around on the patio and no sign of Selene anywhere. After a thorough check of the garden, getting increasingly worried, I heard the sound of clucking coming from next door's garden. I ran round there and found Selene facing down a large ginger tabby cat. My neighbours have the most immaculate garden, with not even a blade of grass out of place and there was my chicken scrabbling at their beautiful lawn. With the help of my neighbour, who luckily seemed more amused than anything else, I managed to round her up, but at the cost of a sprained ankle and a bruised knee.

 

I felt pretty relieved when everyone was safe and sound back in their run.

 

So today's lessons:

We need a higher fence

Araucanas can jump higher than hybrids

I need to invest in an angling net for emergencies

Introductions don't always go according to plan

 

I owe my neighbours a big box of eggs for disrupting their sunday afternoon.

[Charlottechicken]

What a stressful time you've had! I'm so pleased you got to Selene before the cat did.

 

I have to say that is exactly what happened to my Araucana bantam last year. She was frightened by me taking the top off the Eglu, and took off skyward like a little Harrier jump jet, straight over into next door, where she flew at 6 to 8 feet in the air for a while (from the shed to the fence etc) before going to ground. I was allowed round to look for her and picked her up just as a cat was going to do the same thing. I was so stressed and can imagine how you feel.

[Thalia]

Woke up today to discover that I've hurt my back chasing Selene down yesterday. Apparently the sprained ankle wasn't that bad, but I obviously twisted my back at the same time.

 

Can anyone suggest a good place to buy an angling net on the web? This chicken chasing lark is leading to injury!