Can't Push a Chicken

I may be slow, but I'm not dumb.  It took me about two years to learn that noodles in chicken noodle soup and live chickens have things in common.  They can't be pushed.

Katy and Lena are serious gardeners

It's lovely to let the hens roam around the whole back yard at this time of year.  They make perfect fowl-weather gardeners, not caring if it's cold and blustery (not too crazy about rain, however); there are no seeds or young growies on the verge of emergence; and they are after all the bugs and critters that would grow up to eat the garden later in spring.

Unfortunately, Nora is not careful
about edges

Nora takes the interior part of the bed

One draw back: if I go away from the house, the girls need to be in the safety of their pen and not available for some slouch-about coyote with nothing better to do than provide fresh hen for his family's supper.  So time to herd the hens back into their space--think again.  There must be some poultry gene that says if an object is pushed toward you (like a hand attached to a voice saying "shoo"), you dart, dodge, and run around it.

Tidying the edges--good work, girls!

So now my smarts can shine.  After observing what makes a hen run (watching other hens run--they mimic), Things I get to do today say get their attention by singing "girls" in a high-pitched cackle and start to run toward the hen pen.  Helps to have a handful of oats to toss into the pen.