Chaos and Cacophony
Roy came up with the title of this blog. I told him, "Nah, I'll just call it 'Goodnight birds.'"
He said, "What? You're going to give up a good title because you can't spell it?" He was right, which meant that I had to use it because I hate when he's right. I had to google cacophony. Lucky me, it sounds just the ways it looks - I got it right on the first try!
Anyhow, this blog entry is supposed to be about the process of collecting all our birds each night, not about my fear of misspellings.
When we first let the birds roam free each day, we had to go through the frustrating process each night of herding them back into the chicken house. As the weather grew colder, fewer and fewer of the birds remained outside of the chicken house at sunset. One day, Roy realized that all he had to do was go in the house, throw some scratch around (seed mix), and the birds would run in. The chickens would actually come in while he was standing in there. The guineas would all stand outside yelling "buckwheat" until he got out of the way!
This is a 2-minute video demonstrating this process. At the start, you'll see all the birds waiting for me by the chicken house. I go in to throw the scratch around and the chickens follow while the guineas wait outside (I cut out about 30-seconds of "buckwheat" here). If you watch carefully, the guineas disappear behind the house right before I come out and circle it once before going in. Then my cat, Kearney, comes along and distracts the last guinea who becomes disoriented and does a few more circles. You may here me fussing at the end because one stubborn barred rock chicken tried to come out right when the last guinea went in. I look like I kick it, but I promise I was just giving it a boost back into the house!
Comments