Ever since our laying hens became experts at flying over the fence, they have been pushing the limits of free range. Unfortunately for us, Rookie has discovered that those pretty, muzzle-sized packages the chickens keep leaving everywhere are full of gooey deliciousness. And she has nothing better to do than snoop around all day sniffing after mice and stumbling across random eggs.
I have taken to checking known egg spots continuously throughout the day, hoping to beat her to it. But the real problem is that the chickens have been hanging out in the road, begging to get hit by cars and probably annoying the crap out of our neighbors.
On Tuesday morning, Randy and I moved the chicken coop several hundred feet down the fence line. Surely the chickens won’t stray too far from the coop, we thought. Within five minutes of opening the door they were back at the driveway and up to their street-crossing shenanigans.
As evening drew near, we became concerned that the chickens might not be able to find their way back home. As the sun sunk lower, they just started milling around where the coop used to be, waiting for it to magically materialize. We tried luring them with food. We tried herding them. Chickens don’t herd, they scatter. One lone leghorn caught sight of the coop and took off running. She 
is now officially the smartest chicken on the farm.
Irritated, I told them to go ahead and sleep in the trees, see if I care if they get cold or wet or eaten. But Randy, the voice of reason, suggested we get the truck and haul the coop back over. By the time we got the coop (lone leghorn perching inside) back over to the chickens dusk had fallen. The chickens were thrilled to see it and started jumping in as soon as I got the door open.
Several chickens, however, had made other plans and had taken up roosting in the trees. Two sat exposed on little sweet gum twigs, not more than four feet off the ground, but most were more secure in the cedars. I managed to lift them off their perches, or accidently shake them out of the trees, and everyone went to bed. We closed up the coop and left it hooked to the truck for the night.
That evening, prior to putting the chickens to bed, we had put up a 100 ft long, four foot chicken wire fence along an old fence line running perpendicular to the road. The idea being to keep the chickens behind the fence, out of the orchard, and away from the road. Sure, they can go around it, but we figured they wouldn’t. Before sunrise Wednesday morning we finished the fence, pulled the chicken coop to the other side of it (though not quite as far as before, just in case the lost their way again), and let them out.
Moments later what emerged from the trees on the wrong side of the fence but two hens who had managed to hide well enough from me to have an overnight camping trip. We shooed them in with their compatriots. Walking back to the house, I joked with Randy about how long it would be before the first chicken turned up on the wrong side of the fence.
Eight-thirty. The first chicken had breached the fence by 8:30 a.m. By late afternoon, a full two-thirds of the chickens had managed to fly over the fence, some of them going back and forth several times. I would like to note that we were correct in that none of them went around the fence. Luckily, they all managed to find their way home when we opened the gate in the evening.
At Randy’s suggestion, I tied baling twine across the tops of the fence posts and attached colorful streamers, making the fence 6-8 inches higher and visually disorienting. On Thursday, eleven chickens and all five guineas got out by flying over the five foot gate. Modification plans are in the works
Quasi-solution as it is, it is only temporary. It is only a matter of time before they venture far enough to go around the fence, or head in the other direction and find themselves at the mercy of our neighbor’s dog, an athletic and daring blue healer.
