Despite refusing to name the chickens in our flock, I can tell them all apart and I enjoy watching their varied personalities.  On flock moving day, I opened the gate and rattled some laying pellets and our two ancient hens came running fast as you please.  I think these two old birds would follow me anywhere --- they've had four years on our farm to learn that my shovel turns up worms, my bucket is full of compost, my wheelbarrow overflows with chickweed, and my hands are sprinklers of grubs.  Sure, the old hens had to stop now and then to nibble on a luscious sprout along the way, but they didn't veer off from my path.

The young golden comet is nearly as keen as the old girls, so she followed on their heels, but the rooster was a bit dubious.  He was raised by our white cochin, whose sole purpose in the flock is mothering chicks, so he's a bit leery of human contact.  Still, when three quarters of his harem fled the old pasture, the rooster decided he'd better follow along.  He was less attuned to the rattle of grain than to the locations of his flock and danger, so I had to ask Mark to back off as he filmed from the rear --- Mark's proximity was getting the rooster too excited and I was afraid the whole flock would turn into a pillar of salt (or maybe a herd of cats) if they looked back.

Within five minutes, three hens and a rooster had walked calmly into their new pasture, but the white cochin was nowhere to be seen.  I closed the pasture gate and headed back to see where she'd gotten sidetracked, and was surprised to find her still in the original pasture!  She was remarkably unwilling to run free, and I had to get behind her and chase her out the gate.  Even then, the cochin kept trying to double back and our least pastured hen was finally ignominously carried to her new home.  While her flockmates were scratching through leaves and chowing down on chickweed, the white hen wandered aimlessly through the pasture, showing the clear difference genetics can make in a hen's foraging ability.

Stay tuned for more on the flock's introduction to their new pasture and on our chicken plans for 2011.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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