A little chicken attention

With spring - I mean, hawk season - upon us, we took a few minutes to do some chicken infrastructure upgrades. The run has been covered by aviary netting in the past, but we took that down before (or maybe during, I don’t quite remember) last winter. The replacement net I purchased had larger openings, but way finer texture. We started to try to install it, and it was just a comedy of errors, we and everything was getting caught in it like a spider web. We knew right away that if we used that netting we would have dead tiny birds caught in it every day!

So a friend suggested just string some line across the run instead of a full net, a MUCH easier solution. Steve and Montana bought a reflective style of line for the job, which will catch the sunlight a bit, further discouraging airborne predators. We strung it from our center post to each of the fence posts to start. Definitely worth a try.

You can see the reflective specks built into the rope.

They may look dead, but it’s just a bunch of ladies digging holes and soaking up the sunshine. Sarge the Rooster is keeping watch.

Josie keeping an eye on the work, but also her distance.

While we were out working on the chicken run, we also repaired and moved one of the nesting boxes inside the coop. Goodness, the girls did not like us interrupting their egg-laying time. Such a ruckus! Volume on for full effect.

The hens all moved over to the other side of the coop while we were working on the blue nesting box.