The morning my entire flock decided to fly the coop

I was making coffee yesterday when I looked out my kitchen window in Portland and saw zero chickens in the run. The gate was shut, but all eight of my birds were just gone. My heart dropped. I ran outside in my slippers and found them having a party in my neighbor's prize-winning vegetable garden, scratching up his freshly planted lettuce starts. He was standing on his deck, arms crossed, not looking happy. I had to herd them back one by one, which took about twenty minutes of pure chaos, because my Barred Rock, Bertha, kept leading them in circles. Turns out a section of the run's hardware cloth had rusted through near the bottom, and they'd all squeezed out. I spent the rest of the morning patching it with some new wire and a bunch of zip ties. Has anyone else had a full-scale jailbreak from a tiny, hidden weak spot?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordan1341mo ago

My friend's chickens tunneled out under their run last spring. The ground was soft from rain and they just dug a little hole big enough to squeeze under. It's crazy how they find the one spot you don't check.

james6611mo ago

Jordan134 you're not kidding... my neighbor lost three hens that way last June because they found a soft spot near the fence post that he'd missed when he built the run. They dug out and were gone before he even had his morning coffee. It's like they have a sixth sense for weak points in any enclosure, I swear.