Had a great chicken that hung out with us all the time. She would follow us around everywhere. She liked to help pull weeds. She also refused to sleep in the coop and 2 weeks ago got her head ripped off by a skunk. My wife cried for a week straight. She was too independent.
Man, that’s a shame. But there’s a limit to how much you can force a chicken into the coop. You do it often enough, and they stop letting you pick them up without a struggle, which kinda defeats the whole thing imo.
We have a volunteer hen (a feral girl that shares the yard with us) that disappears for days at a time, and I worry about her getting killed by something, but it’s one of those things that keeping her safe would not only be difficult, but would make her scared of us instead of mostly friendly.
Luckily, the full on pet hen loves the coop, and stays in it by preference when she’s outside at night (she usually sleeps inside, but sometimes decides she’s not in the mood lol), so she can be as safe as any chicken in a coop gets.
Had a great chicken that hung out with us all the time. She would follow us around everywhere. She liked to help pull weeds. She also refused to sleep in the coop and 2 weeks ago got her head ripped off by a skunk. My wife cried for a week straight. She was too independent.
Man, that’s a shame. But there’s a limit to how much you can force a chicken into the coop. You do it often enough, and they stop letting you pick them up without a struggle, which kinda defeats the whole thing imo.
We have a volunteer hen (a feral girl that shares the yard with us) that disappears for days at a time, and I worry about her getting killed by something, but it’s one of those things that keeping her safe would not only be difficult, but would make her scared of us instead of mostly friendly.
Luckily, the full on pet hen loves the coop, and stays in it by preference when she’s outside at night (she usually sleeps inside, but sometimes decides she’s not in the mood lol), so she can be as safe as any chicken in a coop gets.