chicken rodeo

it has been raining/misting for the past few days... the crops needed it badly, so we're all praising the skies around here.

today's rainy-day adventure recipe consisted of one major ingredient: chicken
it came time to shift the chickens to another area of the farm (free-range chickens, do, after all, need to range.) since our mobile coop is still in the works, we have a sled-like coop that proves to be a bit difficult to move with the chickens inside. so, we decided to try a new method of moving: move the coop, then move the chickens.
tim + devin moved the sled coop across the farm then the three of us tried to corral the 35 birds from old pecking spot to new...
DON'T try this at home, or anywhere else, for that matter. turns out, chickens don't herd well. chickens don't herd at all, really.
first we tried big sticks, like giant chop sticks, to keep them all in one bunch and moving along the tractor path. leason: chop sticks don't work, no matter how giant they are.
we managed to get three birds across the farm. three out of thirty-five.
then we tried using a net. this proved a teenie-tiny bit more successful: seven more. twenty-five to go.
time for catch-and-release training. tim managed to capture four and just carry them from one spot to the other. devin + i tried the same... we each got one.
as we dove through 18" high clover fields, grasping for chickens and grabbing wet, green leafies instead, tim got a big bin and we started collecting.
after about 4o minutes, all of the birds were safe and sound in the coop. leaving the three farmers soaked, tired, and learned.
there is no such thing as a chicken rodeo. and there is a reason for that!