Wayward hens

[Icemaiden]

Since being allowed to free range last Saturday & Sunday afternoons, my hens have been making a break for it when I go to feed them in the mornings. I've tried putting a 1 1/2' tall length of plywood across the inside of the door, that I can still step over (the door opens outwards), but it only took 1 day for the girls to learn to get over it...
Most of this week I've coaxed the escapees back with the rattle of a food tub, but this morning nothing that I did would persuade Varta to come back. Eventually I had to leave her shut out in the garden with a neighbourhood cat. Mercifully my husband was able to get her back into the run later in the day, but if he hadn't have been there, she'd have been shut out until after dark, when I got home.

Do other people have this problem, & what do you do about it? 19

 

[chrismahon]

I used to collect our cream Legbars from an apple tree after dusk, because they were too quick to catch and wouldn't respond to the feed scoop rattle. If I got there too late I had to get the step ladders out to reach them as they would keep climbing higher to roost. Eventually a rattle of the feed scoop and a few bits of grain in the run got them in. From there they made their way into the coop. Took weeks to teach them to recognise the treats rattle. Never had this problem with any of our others, even the TNN's.

 

[NovaAman]

All of my birds have been free range since chick days... Well, we started having hawk attacks happen so often, I was losing birds like crazy. I ended up having to keep them locked up more while the hawks have been migrating and hanging about. When I go in the run, I open the door as little as possible, to keep them in. I swear, sometimes they want to over whelm me and they KNOW I am not going to step on them. LOL, anyway, I have to be quicker than them getting in so they can't get out. They don't like it.

 

[Marigold]

I hold the muck bucket at ground level between my legs and shove my Leghorn backwards as I go in, she being the main escapologist. So long as they see I have food with me there is usually no further trouble, eg when i take in their warm mash before bedtime. Getting out is sometimes more of a problem as I have to leave a gap to go through myself, though not when they are heads down hoovering up their tea.
in the morning I try to let them out into the garden first if all if they are going out to grass and then I can clean up and do water and food and collect eggs with no hens in there at all. Then after an hour or so they are quite pleased to go back if I give them a bit of corn. I did find that this year the ones who were moulting gave me the runaround sometimes, they seemed to lose the habit of doing what they were told, but it's come back now they're laying again.