Welcome to Fort Cluck: Big Rock’s HEN-itentiary

We have a love-hate relationship with our flock of chickens.

I see fellow homesteady friends sharing their flocks on Instagram. They'll be calling their hens by name, listing how many eggs each laid while feeding them special chickeny treats like mealworms and sprouted special grains.

Our chickens don't know such treatment. We do take them for granted because we have more personable livestock; horses, cows, and in the past, goats and sheep. The furry and haired animals get more specialized love and attention than the feathered ones. But we know their importance; we eat our hen's eggs daily.

Sourced from 3 hours to the west, this chicken feed is the best!

We feed them specially sourced regionally local food that is soy-free and sustainably produced. Top-notch quality for top-notch eggs. The chickens are the hassle we live with. I hate to be like that. I used to have the saying, "More to Love!" but that was before Clancy. Nowadays, every facet of the ranch and ourselves takes turns on the back burner. The chickens barely make it to the stove, if I am being honest.

Efficient systems are what we like to create for each species at the ranch. The cows have a grazing system that we slowly tweak and improve upon as it evolves. The horses have winter and summer setups that can make them more intensive or less, depending on our time. But for the chickens… we have never figured out an efficient, long-term chicken solution.

We try something out and usually run into problems; once they were too close to the house, another time too far. The latest solution was a stall in the barn for a coop and a massive fenced run. We had few complaints at first. Then they began laying under boulders. Lastly, they excavated many exit points under the fencing and became essentially free-range.

While this diversifies their diet in a good way, it creates trouble. Chicken poop IN the barn, scratched up the ground, making a mess of hay, gravel, and destruction of Nathaniel's blessed tree rings. Chicken feet and poop create giant messes we don't have the time or energy to clean up constantly. So then we live in chicken squalor and curse them every chance we get! Not to mention they jeopardize themselves to predation in their wanderlust; chickens are too expensive to raise to egg-laying-hood just to become a raccoon snack.

Chickens are clucking frustrating!

The fact that we literally cannot buy the same quality of eggs as we can produce here has been their only saving grace. But having them free-range lent them to find secret laying spots, keeping us from their one positive. None of our past solutions have been permanent nor worked well because no system or location for their containment was ever clear… until now!

We've had a ridiculous amount of conversations trying to decide where or what to do with those golden egg-producing cluckers. No spot on the ranch seemed right. The chickens needed to be out of the barn. But they have to be close to us, water, and electricity. Nathaniel finally came up with the bright idea to section the first pen off the barn. The horses keep the stall and get a smaller run, while the chickens would have the other part of the existing pen, which has a 10-foot gate for access.

It required adding three railroad tie fence posts, a new section of fence, electric fencing on top, and fashioning an L-shaped wire fence flange to line the inside bottom perimeter of the fence so the chickens can't scratch their way under it. Then we moved their feeder, waterer, and chicken tractor in as a temporary coop. Fort Cluck’s Hen-itentiary angles down towards the barn; Nathaniel added 12” pressure-treated boards to keep all the material we add that the chickens will turn into compost from falling through the fence into the horse run. We did all this in a matter of two days! Before winter, Nathaniel has designs to make a roughly 6x8 foot coop for them.

Clancy playing in the chicken tractor. Eggs in nesting boxes lined with artificial turf; the perfect solution. Boe the horse in the new stall and run enjoying his clucking neighbors. The hardware clothe type fencing we bent into a flange to keep the chickens for digging out!

Some of the chickens found their way in and decided to roost when dusk fell, but the majority went back to their stall-converted-coop. Clancy had a tough time going to sleep that night, and we were determined to contain all the chickens ASAP. Unfortunately, I didn't make it, I passed out with Clancy, and Nathaniel went out after 10 pm to do the dirty deed.

He caught and clipped one wing of each hen so they wouldn't be able to fly onto and then over the top of the fence. It is definitely NOT an easy task to do alone, but he was very motivated! It is also kind of a messy, dirty job. Feather fluff gets all over you. Also, you are inevitably scratched by the trimmed-up wing feathers as they flap around when not held securely.

One hen escaped him, which left him feeling bitter and disgruntled. In the following days, that hen caused us mischief, sneeking out through the gate, and before we caught her and clipped a wing, she was flying over to escape. I hope her neck tingles because it has come very close to being wrung. But, just kidding, we wouldn't literally wring her neck with our bare hands—we'd chop her head off with an ax.

The timing of this fell around the Fourth of July, and the irony was definitely not lost on me. Here we were essentially creating a chicken concentration camp, kissing their birdie freedoms goodbye, and all I felt was peace and jubilee as I sat and watched them in their henitentiary. Freedom does not come free. Prices are paid, and freedom always is at someone else's expense. Thankfully, in this case, we are just talking about chickens and their containment is actually good for them; they are much safer from predation now and aren’t at risk of us axing them either!

Now, we are free from free-ranging birds. I cannot tell you the weight it lifted off us to have those cluckers contained and lay eggs in respectable spots, AKA nesting boxes again (not under rocks and in the haystack to rot). My mind was immediately at ease while Nathaniel took a few days as we had some hens bucking the system, which really thwarted his relief. But now, we are both happy to have the hens confined, and they've adjusted well.

Oliver Lemons the Second, our rooster, seems relieved at the setup—as any dictator would, I suppose.

P.S. We thoroughly enjoyed watching the classic movie Chicken Run after doing this project, haha!

We match!