In the picture above, one can see Laverne in essentially her favorite roosting spot. Well, that is her favorite roosting spot unless she is broody, and then virtually nothing will get her out of a nest box. When she does come out of her brood box. When she leaves the box, everything has to be done in a hurry and she is clearly clucking about being late for a very important date like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

As wonderful as it was to watch her raise her chicks (which rather quickly grew larger than her), there were some unexpected developments. Laverne was confused about where to roost once she had her chicks. She started out going to the coop, but then felt the call of the porch. The chicks had developed sufficiently to hop/sort-of-fly up to the porch rail, and they would tuck themselves in under wings and go to sleep. We have had a raccoon come on to the porch in the night and kill a chicken. In fact, that is how we lost our last laying chicken (full size). So, for a few weeks, it was routine to go open the coop, prepare a nest box or the access to the roost, go back to the porch and scoop all three up for a slow walk to go nighty-night.

Then we hit the next stage. Laverne decided she was done being a mom. The kids needed to fend for themselves. She would stand outside the door clucking that it was time for her to come in and resume eating treats on the counter. She was ignoring the chicks, but they were right there ready to explore this new (to them) idea. We drew the line there. We have enough animals in the house, and don’t need three chickens in here. It was sweet when it was just Laverne, but it’s too much poop with three. Laverne can come in and not poop at all, but that took time. At any rate, we have pretty much stopped letting any chickens walk through the door. Similarly, she began to fly back up to the antlers for her nightly slumber. The chicks were quite flustered, but eventually (with minimal help from me), they figured out they could easily fly up to the antlers.
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Pay attention: that’s three chickens pooping all night long right in front of the most used doors in the house. That brings us to today. Apparently, Laverne really liked hatching her babies. She is broody again. This time, I am taking away her eggs. I may have to take the liners out to see if we can cool her off and stop the broodiness. However, even though she is back to being broody and spending her time in a nest box, the two kids have decided that the antlers are still a good place to roost, even without mom. I’m wondering if Laverne thought that there were enough prongs on the antlers to house a new set of kids.