Look at the color!

Ominous sky.

The color of the sky, that is.  There will be no free-ranging for the girls this afternoon -- this cloudburst is heading our way. On days like today I am happy to have nowhere we need to go, a warm house, and a big pot of albondigas soup on the stove.  It will be a nice evening. I'm also grateful for the fact that last year we put in a BIG chicken coop, with lots of room for the hens to scratch and peck, lay and sleep, in the safety of an indoor area.  They love being outside, but when the rain starts coming down, they do have the sense to head indoors to their mansion and just look out the windows at the weather.

While things are peaceful on the human end of the old homestead, we've had plenty of chicken drama as of recently. Callie, our Silver Wyandotte, is a flyer who has managed to fly up to the very top of this chicken run (about 8 feet high), which is normally our pet pigeon Floyd's domain.  Floyd gets along well with all the girls, but Callie has managed to find her way into Floyd's birdseed and has been eating him out of house and home every day.

Miss Callie

I am tired of having to re-fill Floyd's food container every day, so I tasked Big Ag this morning to build Floyd a small condo inside the chicken coop itself -- a Callie-proof condo where he can eat in peace and his food will be left alone. I hesitate to make life too hard on Callie because she is at the bottom of the pecking order, literally, and so her ability to perch in high places gives her a way to get away from others when she's being bullied. We also never let her free range outside, due to her expert flying ability -- we literally do not have a fence on the property she couldn't make it over if she wanted to, and chasing a skittish chicken across the countryside is something I don't have the time or energy for.

Ah, when you have chickens there is always drama.  There's no getting around it.  But even they, drama queens that they are, will find a way to get along later, as this latest storm rolls in and they head for the warmth and dryness of the coop where they'll huddle together, as if they have never had any chicken compatibility drama or personality issues.  

Even Floyd will find shelter and warmth in there.  And starting today, also his dinner.