Working it through...

Well, not too sure that the chickens are in a much better place with each other, but I've helped their environment work a bit better for them in the meantime.

Today I had the two big girls out roaming around but discovered them trying all means of escaping the property which has never happened before. So after shooing them back down where they belong (and getting Mouse out of the hedge 6ft up) it seemed that Mouse was desperate for something and was eventually waiting by the door of the coop. So I let her in and she promptly sat up on the nest and laid an egg. My chickens have been very poor egg layers since March, so this was fantastic. But it meant that I now couldn't shut them out of the coop all day and couple that with them being escape artists I needed to figure something else out.

So I found an old window fly-screen under the house and used it to partition off a section of the coop where it could be swung open (using cable ties) to have them all together as well as well as accessing the roosts. It also meant I was able to shut them all away during the day when I went out whereas yesterday I had the two big girls free ranging all day until dusk which makes me a bit nervous due to a roaming dog in the neighbourhood and their desire to find a way out! I now just need Simon to extend the roof over the other portion of the coop for the little girls to have rain/sun cover during the day if they need it. I'm hoping with them being closed in together during the day they can observe and get to know each other through the mesh yet still interact/sort it out at the end of the day when going to bed (which is down to merely a minute of jumping around finding their places for the night). I'm hoping one morning to just go down to let the big ones out and find them all scratching around happily together!