The Art of Bribing Chickens

The mystery location of the Hens' new sleeping quarters has been solved.  They've traded The Tree in my yard for a cozy pine at the neighbor's.

In fact, they've pretty much moved in over there.

They spend each day there and have stopped coming home at night.  Today as Lou and I came home from school we saw them pecking around in the neighbors driveway, apparently quite at home.  I tried to lure them down the road to our farm with some old peanut butter toast.

They took the toast but stayed in Margee's yard.

So this weekend I will be bribing chickens in an attempt to get them to come back home. 

I can see what attracts the Hens to the neighbor's yard.  She's got bird feeders all over, cracked corn for the deer, and a pair of ducks that make their way north to her pool each Spring.  She puts up with all their honking, and I know she treats them with her leftovers.  Honestly, with these two around, who needs a compost?

But the thing is is that they're mine.

I got them because I don't ever want to see a bug again, if I can help it.  But if they're clearing Margee's yard of bugs, who's going to take care of mine?

So I've come up with a plan.  It's not very sophisticated, but neither are they, so I'm hoping it works.  Here it is:

Step 1:  Buy them some food
They're probably more apt to come home if I feed them.  Just a theory but I'm going to try it.

Step 2:  Bribe them 
I'm going to march down to Margee's with as much stale bread and Saltines (their absolute fave) as I can hold and I'm not coming back without chickens. 

Step 3:  Keep the bribe going
From now until they've forgotten the glory of Margee's, my yard is going to be a full blown chicken party zone.  I will litter my yard with bread, bread, more bread, and some croutons.  I'm going to have to do something about the dogs so that they don't eat it all; there are some obvious kinks in this plan, but it's what I've got so I'm going to run with it.

Step 4:  Spend more quality time with the Hens. 
The Hens really just want to be where everyone else is, so if we just spend more time outside, and act like we're having a blast, the Hens should stick around.  Maybe I should get some normal chickens too to make our yard seem more bird friendly...

So, that's pretty much it.  And it had better work because there's no way I'm doing the baby Guinea thing again.

At least not this year