I thought by now I would be running out of things to share with you. It surprises me that I continue to have new things to tell you about this week, but I do! This week I discovered that the chickens have finally gotten large enough to get up on the roosting poles to sleep.

The above picture is how I found them in the coop when I went to let them out one morning. We installed the roosting poles with the intention of having the chickens sleep up there. In the wild, it is their natural instinct to sleep up in the trees to protect themselves from predators.

When the chickens first moved into the coop, we put them up on the poles for fun. They weren’t big enough to get up there themselves and needed our help getting down as well.

Not everyone is sleeping up on the poles yet, though. Agnes (the white one) seems to prefer the red strap, which is what we use to keep the gate into the chicken run area closed. I don’t know how that’s comfortable. Reba (the red one at the bottom) seems to prefer roosting on the green Rubbermaid tub.

We built that shelf under the roosting poles with the intent to keep a tray there that can be cleaned more frequently than the rest of the coop. The chickens tend to make the most amount of droppings while roosting, so it’ll be good to be able to clean the area under the roosting poles more often. Now that they’re getting up there on a regular basis I need to put that tray in!

The chickens also tried some more new food this week. I had some rye bread that was going stale, so I tore up a couple of pieces of it and gave it to them. They seemed to enjoy it.

Except Cecilia, who spent the whole time looking up at me while I snapped a few pictures (see above and below).

See what I mean??