Storms and chickens

[lerryn]

Every morning after i let the chickens out, it's a race back up the garden to see who gets through the back door first. (the dry cat food bowls are kept by the door.) Well the chickens have now learnt to come in the cat flap! I imagine one day coming home to find them sat on the sofa!

 

Anyone else had similar experiances?

[lerryn]

Oh... & my big softie of a cat thinks hes a chicken.... sits in the nesting box when he gets too hot, & drinks from the "glug"!

[Laura & CTB]

Oh no - this is not what I wanted to read!! My girls can "beak" the cat flap open but as yet they've not ventured through - guess it's only a matter of time now then

[Jules.]

My girls have never mastered the cat flap , & now they have no chance as they are down the bottom of the garden restrained by netting

Could you get a magnetic cat flap to solve the problem?

Can you post some piccies of the chooks coming through the flap- that would be very funny, & if you filmed it I'm sure you would get it shown on You've Been Framed!!!! You could buy loads of extra chickeny things with the money

[Nick&Trish]

Yep - we had a similar thing. When we put up chicken fencing we made a gate and constructed a cat flap so that the cats could get to all parts of the garden. Geraldine watched the cats a few times, then started sticking her head through, and eventually squatted down and limbo-danced through - quite comical to watch. Then Victoria copied her!

 

We eventually solved the problem by despensing with the cat flap, and having a narrow gap that the cats could get through, but the chickens couldn't, and they don't even try now. However, Geraldine has learnt how to open the gate, or just does a vertical take-off to scale the fence, when she's desperate to get into the part of the garden that still has snails, slugs etc.

 

Maybe you could get around the problem by fitting a narrower cat flap, as our girls seem to have more of a problem sucking their sides in than they have hunkering down.