I expected an unsettled morning…

…because last night after the chickens settled down, I crept in and moved the pullets to the main coop. Then I pulled Landlady’s portable coop right out of the Fortress of Attitude.

Chickens is – truly – so stoopid. Once they go to bed, you can do anything with them no matter how intransigent they are when they’re awake. In this case I took the whole side off the pullets’ coop and plucked them off their perch one by one, and they did nothing but sleepily complain. I think I’d have gotten the same reaction if I started stuffing them into my mouth and noisily chewing. Chickens don’t have an ounce of nocturnal in them.

Be that as it may, I half-expected an uproar this morning. Probably because I left them sort-of separated for so long, the two sub-flocks never have really integrated. They both use the yard, but in two wary groups. It’s only at times like this that I appreciate Landlady’s Brahmas. Say what you will about them as egg-layers – they suck – but if I’d put the RIR pullets in with them they’d have been one happy family long since. Rhode Island Reds are all about half crazy at all times.

So when I came to the gate this morning, at first there was no sign of the pullets. The adults were scratching and cooing as if they didn’t have a problem in the world. But no babies.

Found the first two huddled in a corner, their world in chaos.

Found the other two in the nesting box, probably unable to figure out the small upper door once they’d gone down from the perch. Because the only thing stupider than a chicken is a young chicken. But all in all, so far everything’s fine. Or as fine as anything ever gets in the mind of a chicken.

Slightly OT, nights like that are when I really start liking this pocket flashlight I’ve been carrying for a couple of years.

It’s just a one-AA, one-LED penlight, really. Doesn’t throw as much light as a burn-out-the-bad-guys’-retinas ‘tactical’ flash of the sort I would have expected to be essential to life when I first moved here, but that’s actually good. It produced a useful amount of light, doesn’t blind chickens, and permits hand-free use on the rare occasions when I need that…

Because I can clip it to the bill of a baseball cap. I’ve never been able to justify the purchase of one of those dorky headlamps. But once in a great while this comes in handy.