A Second Escapee

When I arrived to take care of the birds in the new pen, I discovered the black cockerel patrolling the perimeter.  He was in no distress so I let him continue on while I was inside dealing with the food and water.  When I saw him approaching the door, I opened it and stepped away.  He strolled back inside, while looking at me with a privileged attitude, and I closed the door after him.  He is kind of a jerk.

Once inside, he had a drink, nibbled at the food and picked a fight.  Being the smallest rooster in the pen, he gets the worst of it when he picks fights, yet he persists.  When he challenges the Big Red broilers, they mostly just stare at him until he goes away.  They are calm enough that they don’t eat to play his games.  Sometimes, though, one of them will give him the smack down is asking for. 

There was a hole in the netting in the roof, rather than on the side, which leads me to think he picked a fight, flew up to escape, broke through the netting, and landed outside.              Luckily for him, there were no predators in the area.  A fox or lynx would find it amusing if he were to pick a fight.

The netting we use over the pen has worked well.  We have never had a predator bird try to get into a pen.  One year, there was a large raven that would sit on a post and look down into the pen.  Another year, we had an owl keeping watch over the chickens.  Even though those birds were easily able to penetrate the netting, they never tried to.  Chickens, though, are big enough to tear through the netting and don’t think there is any reason not to.  Fortunately, chickens don’t usually fly high enough to pass over the metal fencing that the walls are made of.  The flock in this pen consists entirely of roosters, though, and the males of the layer breeds are able to fly well enough to get into trouble.