Chickens freaked out by pile of feathers?

[avjudge]

Our dog ripped a hole in the cover of a century+-old bolster pillow (has a tag with my great-grandmother's name so late 19th C?) and I bowed to the inevitable (rotten cotton) and emptied the feathers in the yard.

Rather than having white bits all over the lawn I decided to empty it in the chicken run and let the birds dig it into the soil, as they have other organic residue. Their summer run is electrified poultry netting set up around our currently-unused vegetable bed, with a tractor parked inside as a coop. (They're closed into the tractor at night.)

Ever since I emptied the pillow, they have been freaked out! A couple tried to run through the poultry netting right afterwards, then 4 of the 5 staged a mass prison break and went over the fence. It's just 4' high and a few do this from time to time but this was unusual. (Because of some shrubs I have temporarily "parked" in the garden, the tractor is close enough to the fence that they use that as a launching point.)

Inside the run they won't come to me when I call (they did come when they were out in the yard) and there's none of the usual happy chatter. They just cluster against the fence.

What's going on? The feathers can't smell like chicken after all these years, can they? Is it just the appearance of a big white mass in the middle of the run? I'm sure they'll get over it in a few days, but it's just so weird!!!

 

[sourland]

Not weird - normal. As prey animals chickens always react strongly to change. They think the feathers are going to eat them.

 

[3KillerBs]

It's new and weird and thus, in their prey-type minds, liable to eat them.

 

[avjudge]

I guess it’s a lot scarier than yesterday’s addition to the run - a Japanese beetle dispenser! They loved that right away.

Two days after the appearance of the feathers, they’re behaving closer to normal but still avoiding that part of the run

 

[Farmer Shell]

I guess it’s a lot scarier than yesterday’s addition to the run - a Japanese beetle dispenser! They loved that right away.
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Two days after the appearance of the feathers, they’re behaving closer to normal but still avoiding that part of the run

oh my goodness what is this, the beetles go in the top and then end up at the bottle as surprise snacks? How interesting... !

 

[avjudge]

Well that’s what supposed to happen. I cut the bottom off the collection bag of a standard Japanese beetle trap, duct-taped a bit of feed sack into a tube, and attached that to the top of a Costco-size vinegar jug (a bit of the top is cut off to make the opening bigger) with 4” holes in the sides for the chickens to stick their head in and retrieve their snacks. I also cut the ends off a couple of cylindrical plastic jars and taped those at the open end of the former bag and the tube to keep the shape. A bit of water in the bottom of the jug keeps the beetles from flying away. It’s not attracting a huge number and I might get a replacement lure for a different brand of trap. Though to date I have also not been picking as many off my raspberries and rose as previous years, so maybe the weather hasn’t been to their liking, or may be my last two years of picking have cut down on the population.

We had a good bit of rain yesterday and that seems to have fixed the scary feather problem, as they are now a dirty brown (instead of shiny white) and the chickens have begun digging through them. Time alone did not seem to have been solving that problem.