Feathered Follies Episode Two

Chickens are highly exciteable birds.  As I stepped into the midst of the escaped flock at FortWhyte Farms, I think I must have spooked them - the chickens scattered in front of me.

I walked over to the chicken tractors, the mobile pens designed to keep the chickens safe and contained, but with room to move, scratch the ground, and peck - in essence, the devices making "pastured poultry" a reality.  Two were completely bereft of chickens; bird-size holes had been made in the wire on the front of the tractors.  In addition to two empty small tractors, several laying hens were moving in and out of their tractor, about ten yards south of where the meat chickens were pastured.  The hole on the laying hens tractor was larger then in the other tractors.  This hole would be my first priority - the laying hen's tractor housed more chickens than the smaller tractors.

I walked over to the laying hen tractor.  I got down on one knee, and began twisting bits of chicken wire together, attempting to repair the breached tractor, or at least make the hole smaller than a chicken.

Eyes forward, intent on my task, I ignored the unhappy clucks around me.

I felt I was making progress.  It was not a perfect repair, but it was working.  Small successes fed my eagerness to get the job done.

I was so eager, I did not notice the large rooster, who had been guarding the hens, had disappeared from my field of vision.

In fact, I wouldn't notice him again until he jumped on the back of legs.  Clearly, he was not happy with my work, and chose to express this with his talons and beak.

Not being a chicken, I was able to express my thoughts and feelings using words.  Not necessarily printable, repeatable words, mind you - but, in all fairness, I did have an angry animal attacking my leg.

I jumped sideways.  The rooster jumped back.  We stared at each other.  He broke off the stare, and but watched me closely.

My loud shouts had scared most of the white meat chickens back inside their tractors - an unintended, temporary benefit, but appreciated, because the commotion had actually scared two laying hens so much they'd hopped the electric safety fence, and were running towards a nearby treeline.

The very same treeline where I'd last seen the weasel.

Weasel+Chickens+dense vegetation=trouble.

I jumped the fence and ran toward the trees, determined to be the variable that would make this equation turn out more positively for the escaped hens.

Do the tractors get repaired?  Is the weasel faster than Barret or the chickens?  Tune in tomorrow for the third installment of Feathered Follies!

Feathered Follies: Episode One

The best adventures for staff here at FortWhyte Alive always seem to happen right at the end of the work day.

I was due for an adventure.  My days had been ending far too normally of late - I was getting used to shutting down and heading home.

Yesterday, my number came up!

As I drove down Sam Fabro Way to lock our front gate, I passed FortWhyte Farms chicken pasture.  The pastured poultry live in large, moveable pens, called chicken tractors.  However, the poultry were not so much pastured as...everywhere...including outside the knee-high electric fence in place to keep out animals like weasels.

I pulled my vehicle over, and quickly took stock of the situation.

(One could even say I took "chicken stock" of the situation, if one was fond of puns..  Not being that person, I won't...but one could say it if one was so inclined.)


White meat birds mingled with golden laying hens.  A rooster was chasing hens, panicking them, and often as not causing the hens to take a short-hop flight, and land outside of their safety fence.

Stepping out of my vehicle and hopping the ditch, I realized that though I'm not a worker on the farm, this was my problem.  Everyone else was home for the day - judging by the food and water supply, the farm had set the chickens up to be self-sufficient for the long weekend.  I had to at least find some way of getting the chickens back inside their safety fence for the night.  After all, what if a mink, skunk or a...

WEASEL!!!*

There it was!  Fifteen yards from where I'd crossed the ditch, a long-tailed weasel popped up!  It crawled to the edge of the safety fence, and stood on it's hing legs to get a better view of its prospective dinner.

I ran towards the weasel.  It dropped to all fours, and slithered back into the well-vegetated ditch.  The instant I turned my back, it poked its head out of cover, scanning for an errant chicken close enough to catch.  I yelled, it hid.  We played this game for a few minutes. More and more chickens hopped the fence into the danger zone.

I had a multi-tool.  I had a first-aid kit; I wasn't sure how it might help, but there it was, on my belt.  I had tried calling farm staff as soon as I saw what was going on, and received no answer, so my phone was not very much help.  I had my trusty FortWhyte Alive ball cap.

I had escaped chickens.  I had a hungry weasel watching the escaped chickens.

It's been said that heroes are not born, they're made.  I tend to think they're not made, they're called.

An agricultural adventure was calling.  Collect.  I accepted the charges, and waded into the clucking, feather-flying, dropping-slicked whirlwind.  Where was this going to end up?  The only thing I knew for sure:  I was not going to lose a chicken to the weasel.

Does Barret slip on chicken poop?  Does the hungry weasel have a chicken dinner?  Is the first aid kit actually useful?
 
Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of Feathered Follies.

* This weasel image is courtesy of the US National Park Service, and is in the public domain.  The author acknowledges that though this is a fine-lookin' weasel, it is not the actual weasel from the story.  This image was used without the weasel's permission.