Chickens on the Range

Once the Chicken tractor extension was built, I started letting the hens out in the evening. For some reason, being on the range has brought them around to me. After an hour of being out, they would come to me when I called them, and Friday night, one even let me pick her up. For some reason, instead of flinching away from me as they did in the pen, they now squat down when I approach and let me pet them. I've bought them some chicken treat and hope to start hand feeding them this week. They are laying three eggs almost daily now and they love strawberry tops. The pictures below are ones I took of them ranging around. They love rolling in the dirt around a particular tree in the orchard, and the one tree closest to where the chicken tractor is currently parked. They roll in the dirt and fluff their wings so the dust will clog parasites in their feathers and kill them.

The other night the hens wandered into the neighboring field where the llamas live and boy those llamas are really territorial. They started making that agitated whinny and chased the hens back into our yard.

I liked this picture. I was actually trying to clean out the dirty shaving of the coop when one of the hens decided to hop up in and through to the coop.